The Misunderstood Hero, Red X
by KF fan
Summary: Red X is a thief. Why does that mean he can't also be a hero?
1. Chapter 1

If someone could have seen his face underneath his skull mask, they would have seen a contemptuous smirk.

Of course, right at that moment, no one could even see the skull mask. Red X was in stealth mode on the roof of the J.P. Sachs Bank Tower a mile away from the "Thank You Teen Titans!" ceremony at City Hall. He was killing a few minutes watching the ceremonies with an occasional glance over his shoulder in the other direction to keep track of what really counted.

He shook his head in disgust. These stupid things were always the same, weren't they? Naively adoring crowds. Cops in their dress blues. Banners. Signs sucking up to individual heroes. Oh no, wait. That's something different. He could see two guys with trombones and another with a big bass drum. Some woodwinds. A fricking band? They have a fricking band at this one?! Oh my god.

He both hated these things and loved them at the same time. He hated them because they were the cherry on top of the fraud sundae that was a typical big city police force and government. He loved them because while all the command structure of the Jump City Police Department was at a ceremony saluting the Teen Titans for saving their city, or some such bullshit, the pursuit of anyone committing a major robbery was handicapped by police captains not being present at police headquarters to coordinate a response.

At least, in Jump City, they were good enough to do these things in the late morning. This meshed perfectly with the Jump City Ballet's schedule, so X could do his barre work and take class in the morning and come back in the afternoon for rehearsals. As long as he could do the job without tripping any alarms, no one would know exactly when it had been pulled off and into what a tight window of his schedule he'd squeezed the robbery of this bank. No one would ever think it was the work of Xavier Li, guest artist and rising star of the Jump City Ballet.

He watched as the police now set up a cordon of officers around the podium and first the mayor and then the Teen Titans entered, the former to tepid applause, the latter to a huge ovation. X watched them closely. With just the press of his right glove fingertips in a particular sequence, index-index-ring-middle-index, the skull mask eye lenses switched to the ones for distance binocular vision. Even from the top of a 40 story glass tower a mile away it was like he was five feet away from them. He could see the slightest suppressed expressions on the "heroes" faces.

He hoped he would see something different this time, some recognition in their stupid little heads about what a giant fraud it all was. After a few minutes careful observation, though, he sighed with disappointment. It was the same as always. The little bat entered first and he somehow managed to walk as though simultaneously standing at attention, investing the stupid sham with a degree of solemnity it didn't deserve at all. Next was Cyborg looking uncomfortable as usual but all serious and proud, too. After him was Beast Boy. X almost felt sorry for him. He seemed to love being cheered but in a needy sort of way, not narcissistic. The next Titan to step forward was Raven. X chuckled. She openly rolled her eyes at the whole display.

"You go girl!" X muttered to himself.

Then was Starfire, who, like the little bat, had a desperately serious air about her as though a stupid, fake ceremony, pure public relations and nothing more, really meant something. X shook his head with a sudden, depressing thought.

Oh my god. Do they actually do shit like this on other planets, too? A black mood momentarily held him in its grip at the thought that complete bullshit might be an intergalactic phenomenon.

Last were Jinx and Kid Flash. She saw the cheering crowd and turned back to her flame haired husband. X grinned. Her expression had clearly said, "Can you believe this shit?" Dash had responded with a sort of half smile that meant, "I know, I know. Just . . play along."

Index-middle-ring-index-index. He went back to the normal lenses. He didn't need to see any more and started toward the opposite side of the roof of the 40 story glass tower. The two window washers, oblivious to his presence, were finally harnessed in and getting into the window cleaning lift. X knew they wouldn't see him with cloaking mode running. He just had to get quietly onto the mesh steel scaffolding without them noticing that Singapore's favorite son, a six foot one, 165 pound, fantastically conditioned, fantastically handsome guy in a skin tight black suit with a cape, a red x on the chest and a skull mask was on there with them.

Mission accomplished. He got on helped by the fact that the two were kibitzing back and forth about some stupid sports team. X shook his head. Why do guys give so much of their time to that garbage? The world cheats them blind while they worry about the batting average of some guy who doesn't know them and couldn't give a shit less about them.

X shook his head as the window washing rig started down. He realized how silly it was but he was still feeling a little irritated that the Titans were the same. The mechanical hum of the machine that slowly let the rig down by releasing metal cable at either side of it accompanied his thoughts along with the wind whipping past the edge of the glass tower. It was a crazy idea, anyway, that he could convince the Titans that his take on things was right and that they were wasting their time with small stuff a lot of the time and actually helping the worst people another part of the time.

Jinx could give that message an honest hearing. She knew what bullshit establishment labels were. Probably Kid Flash, too. He'd seen past her "villain" label to fall for her. But the others! Even Raven . . the whole thing about living a prophecy, that his research had turned up, seemed bad to X. You get too caught up in that "it is written" sort of shit and you're not liable to be flexible enough to consider that you're wrong.

X waited a few minutes while the window washing guys did their thing and slowly worked their way down the building. He needed for them to get down to at least the 35th floor. He had 25 floors worth of cable in the velcro harness on the underside of his cape. More than that had seemed to stress the cloaking. Too much mass and flecks of light weren't redirected. All of a sudden people would see glimpses of him and a coil of cable six inches thick.

A less adept thief might have gotten impatient at how slowly the window washers were doing their job, now just starting to squeegee the 39th floor windows. There was an art to this job, a feel for the timing and rhythm of it. Sometimes the most productive thing you could do was to remain absolutely still. Red X was an invisible statue while he bided his time. He'd wait till the window guys got down to 35 then attached the hooks to the underside of the scaffolding and go over the side and let himself down to the 10th. That's where the secret vault was, not the one everybody lining up to open a freaking checking account could see behind the tellers on the ground floor here at the huge bank's west coast headquarters. No, this vault was secret and it was where the target gold was.

X had been hesitant to take on a contract job like this even when it involved one of the giant banks he hated. But it had come from Park so at least he knew he wasn't going to get fucked from that angle. The client seemed safe, too. Very rich guy, said Park when he gave X the pitch amidst the blare of the North Jump Street Festival. The guy made his money in computers, mostly in Europe but also in China and Japan, said Park. He bought himself 200 pounds of gold because he didn't trust the system said Park. X had smiled. He liked this guy already.

But, Park explained, the guy had been skeptical but not skeptical enough. He'd had the gold stored at J.P. Sachs. Not some little local credit union but one of the couple biggest banks in the country. Too big to fail.

Too big to trust, too. It was one the most crooked banks in the country, which is saying something. The billionaire tried to withdraw it from that bank two months ago. Showed up with all the paper work and some guys in a truck waiting outside the bank. Annnnnd they had stiffed him. A fucking billionaire and they stiffed him. Oh, so sorry Mr. So and So. But as you can see if you read section 47 point 3 point 2 of our contract we are entitled to settle you in cash if conditions force us to. We're so sorry but we're going to pay you in cash. The guy had gone nuts right there in their headquarters. How the fuck can you not just take it out of the vault and give it to me? It's mine! You're just supposed to be holding it for me! What did I pay you those storage fees for, huh?! You thieves!

All of this was at a high decibel level, calling them thieves amidst the expensive italian leather decor straight out of the Poliform catalog and in front of a crowd of onlookers, still got him none of his gold. Him, a billionaire and they stiffed him! Park told X they gave him a check for the cash value of his gold, $3.5 million and brought two cops into the office to "escort" him out.

Now the guy went into quiet furious mode, said Park. The guy hadn't inherited his money. He was a self made billionaire. The scene in the bank had been a stray relic from his days as a normal guy. Billionaires, Park explained, didn't make scenes. Scenes were for getting what you wanted when all you could do was embarrass someone. Billionaires just got want they wanted. He wanted his gold. He didn't want a fucking check. The whole point of buying gold was to have something real that wasn't just a piece of paper that promised that someone would give you some other pieces of paper which were also just promises. And maybe eventually you could trade one of these hopefully kept promises for something real. Gold is real. And if economies crash gold will go through the roof in value.

The billionaire had waited a few months then he'd talked to the baddest motherfucker he knew who discreetly put him in touch with Germany's version of Park. This guy had told him it couldn't be done. But, he wanted to do business with the billionaire in the future. To mollify him he told him he'd contact "another guy I know", meaning Park. He'd given Park an intro to the whole thing on the order of "Look, I know you're gonna tell me 'no' but I have to ask so . . . " And there had been a component of "I know this is in Jump City and your base is east Asia . . but . . "

Park had paused as long as he possibly could then told him that he knew a guy, a very special guy, who might be able to do it. Messages went discreetly back and forth and when the billionaire spoke at a trade show in Shanghai, he sat down with Park in a darkened movie theater a few blocks from the trade show while a very chop socky kung fu film played on the screen in front of them. The billionaire and Park missed all the subtle subtext of the rags to riches action film as they discussed business.

Jobs like this were exactly what you normally didn't do, Park explained. Normally, you looked for a weak defense around something valuable. You tried to find a jewelry wholesaler with an alarm that could be beat, an importer who cut corners to save money and didn't properly segregate the really valuable stuff, something like that. You didn't try to hit a place whether it was weak or not. Park's sagely counsel of the nature of smart thieving made no impression. The billionaire wanted this place hit, period. He gave Park information. It was very good information. He and Park agreed on tentative terms but Park told him that nothing was final if his special guy didn't take the job.

Park flew from Shanghai to Jump City. He never spoke to X except in person and in the right sort of locations. He would get his attention one way or another and set a meeting in a smart location. Park showed up at the next performance of the Jump City Ballet in a white suit with a bright red tie in the middle of the 5th row from the stage. X was on stage as Tybalt in Romeo and Juliet. He saw Park out of the corner of his eye just before dramatically stabbing the wimpy blond guy dancing the role of Mercutio. A minute later, red tights clad X fell to the stage, killed by Romeo, another wimpy guy who couldn't have beaten X in a fight if X was barehanded and the guy had an Uzi. Staring dead eyed out toward the audience, X could see a flyer for a street festival in the north end of Jump City in Park's hand and that Park had seven fingers showing against the background of the flyer. X nodded slightly as the curtain for that act came down.

Early the next evening, Xavier Li walked from his apartment building a circuitous route to the street festival a few blocks north. It was the noisy version of such things with a band, a roving trumpet player, jugglers, a guy on stilts, craft displays off to one side and some carnival games on the other. The street was not quite packed but most of the way there. X knew that his job was to just walk right through the middle of it till Park saw him from wherever he was. Then Park would, literally bump into him and they'd go off to some fringe of the proceedings and talk.

Just as he got to one end of the festival, X felt a hand at his back. "Oh, sorry," said the familiar voice. X walked off in one direction past a fortune teller's tent. Park, followed, dressed in jeans and a t-shirt, just another shlub, and laid it all out beside the brightly colored tent as calliope music suddenly blared from just the other side of the tent filling the noise deficit from the band taking a break. As usual, X listened very carefully but also peppered Park with questions. Plans? Security? Timing? How do we know that the gold is there? Escape routes?

It turned out the billionaire had gotten the german version of Park to hack J.P. Sachs. Internal memos showed that they had stiffed the guy in order to use his gold to live up to a contract for the sale of gold to China. A Chinese consortium was irate that they had not already gotten gold for which they'd paid J.P. Sachs. And, the bank's internal correspondence showed there should be more gold. Maybe another 100 pounds of gold that was supposed to go to Shanghai along with the billionaire's gold. Park was supplying X with plans of the place, documents on timing, the layout of this 10th floor vault and more. The billionaire wanted his 200 pounds of gold. He'd pay $5 million in cash to Park and he didn't care what other gold got taken. Hell, he wanted more gold to be taken. Let those crook motherfuckers at J.P. Sachs squirm, Park told X he'd said.

X was silent for a long time. Park expected it. X never said yes right away to any job.

"The weight's a problem," he finally muttered. "Maybe to a guy who doesn't even weigh 150 pounds," he said, giving Park a playful swat on one shoulder, "I look pretty heavy but I don't weigh much more than you. 200 extra pounds is a lot of weight to me. And it's some bulk, all those 100 ounce bars. And anything more than that, the necessary icing on the cake for this job, just pushes it further into being a problem. Let me look at it and get back to you."

Park had nodded as solemnly as he could. It was all he could do to avoid a grin and a fist pump. He knew X. If X said it was impossible, that meant he would do it but that it would be tough. For X to only say 'Let me look at it and get back to you' was practically a victory dance in advance.

The next morning, Park drifted down to the front desk of the four star hotel where he was staying and asked if there were any messages for him. The guy behind the counter said that Park's tickets had arrived. He handed Park an envelope with the logo of Jump City Tickets. There was only one ticket in it, to that afternoon's baseball game at Jump Stadium. Park, dressed casually again, showed up just before the start of the game. The stands were only half full and there was no one within 10 seats of Park and X in the upper deck of the stands.

X agreed to do the job but, reading from 10 pages of handwritten notes he'd made the night before, he outlined in excruciating detail all of the problems in this one over the first hour of the baseball game. Park expected this too. This was pure X. He thought everything through. Park knew he had to just sit and listen. That was fine. Even this kind of conversation with X was fun for Park.

It was always fun for Park to deal with X.

X was one of the few people Park interacted with as an equal. It was a refreshing break from guys being so deferential to him. It was odd to say about a guy that he saw just three or four times a year but X was probably his best friend. He didn't click with anyone like with X. He was sure that he and X would have become pals no matter how they had encountered each other.

For each of them, the other other was a unique safety valve. There was no one else with whom X could talk about this stuff. People below you were targets for law enforcement to flip to get at you. People above you pretty much weren't. Only Park was sort of above X.

Park was barely older than X and had inherited his father's criminal empire involving finance, gambling, international smuggling and the fencing of rare and high end goods covering South Korea, the Philippines, Taiwan, Viet Nam, Thailand, Myanmar, India, Hong Kong, Macau and Singapore. They did legal things, too, when it paid well enough.

There had been a year or two, after Park's dad had died, where various parties, who had always wanted to challenge Park's dad, wouldn't give Park his due respect. Maybe they thought they would move in on the business. Maybe they thought slender, baby faced Park wouldn't be up to running his dad's empire. Maybe they thought of him as just the kid in the suit always sitting in the corner while they talked to Park's dad. After a couple years, everyone realized that Park had learned everything his dad had known and that however young he was and looked, Park was not to be fucked with. None of the various parties were left after two years. Everyone else drew the appropriate inference about challenging Park.

X knew that no law enforcement agency in any country was ever going to go after Park. He paid the requisite graft and bought off the requisite number of cops. Interpol? Hell, Park had showed him the pictures of the guys in Interpol who were on his organization's payroll. The ones with the gambling problems had been especially easy. And even if some rogue honest cop dreamed of making such a bust he sure as hell wasn't going to try to flip Park to get to Red X. Talking to Park was perfectly safe.

For his part, Park knew where X was coming from. They'd had long talks when X was just some school kid in Singapore who kept amazing the organization by somehow getting his hands on extremely valuable stuff. His dad and the Singapore branch of his organization all got a kick out of X. They called him "Singapore pretty boy" for obvious reasons and could never figure out how he got the stuff he got. Diamonds, gold, platinum, a rare painting. The kid would come into their office wearing his fricking schoolboy uniform and put stuff on the desk that the most experienced freelance thieves they knew couldn't get.

At first, to X, Park was just a kid in an expensive suit sitting in the corner while X transacted business with his dad. He and Park would glance at each other during these negotiating sessions, X trying to get as much as possible from Park's dad for some diamonds or a painting or bars of platinum or gold. Park's dad normally wouldn't deal directly with a thief. But X intrigued him. There was something different about him. He had class. Park's dad saw X as the future. And X negotiated hard. Too many people were afraid of him. It bored him. This skinny kid from Singapore didn't back off at all. He'd start walking out three times in a negotiation if he had to in order to get his price.

In the course of these multiple negotiating sessions X would glance at Park a few times. His dad never introduced him to X. Not once. Customers didn't have a right to a scorecard of the organization's roster. For his part, Park would keep X in sight the whole time, patiently watching him, assessing him. After X left, Park's dad would quiz him. Did you notice he said this? What should you infer from that, and so on. Park's dad was always trying to hone his boy's skills.

Eventually, X and Park developed a sort of wordless proto-friendship. They knew each other on sight. They somehow had a degree of trust of each other even though not a single syllable had ever passed between them. They would nod to each other.

Finally, after selling a briefcase full of platinum bars taken from a police commander, plunder the cop taken from some crooks, and waiting for Park's dad and two of his flunkeys to test them, X had walked around to the side of his desk and extended his hand.

"I'm X," he said over his outstretched hand.

"I'm Park," said the Korean kid in the super expensive light gray suit rising to stand almost as tall as X and even skinnier. "And you're Xavier Li. You live at 2207 Sims Avenue in the Geylang district of Singapore with your mother."

The flunkeys, watching over their shoulders, guffawed.

Park continued, "That's just to point out to you that we know something about you. We know you're not just 'X'."

X smiled. "Everyone calls me 'X'. I didn't say that just to hide my identity from you. And you live at 132 Zhongyong 1st Road in the Shilin district of Taipei City, Taiwan."

The flunkeys guffawed even louder and slapped the desk. "Dueling dossiers!" laughed one. The moment could have gone in any of several different directions but both boys broke into grins. They shook hands again with a little more vigor. Luckily, Park's dad also laughed.

"Come on," said Park grabbing X by the arm and heading for the door. "We're going to have a business meeting, Dad," he said over his shoulder as the two walked out of the office and Park led them past the guards at the building entrance across the parking lot to a shiny silver Mercedes convertible."

X noted the obvious spring in this guy's step as he realized that, till now, he'd never seen him do anything but sit in that chair in the corner.

A thought suddenly occurred to X as they buckled in. "Are you old enough to drive?"

Park pulled away from the curb and zoomed down a boulevard toward the center of Singapore using every bit of the high end car's power. "I'm driving," he chuckled, "So, it looks like I'm old enough."

X chuckled too. Who was going to stop him, anyway?

"So . . . where are you going with all this?" asked Park as the wind whipped past them under starlit skies while they sped around other vehicles. Steamy Singapore could be quite nice at night with a breeze.

"How do you mean that?"

"Well, we find, my dad and I, that most thieves have no big picture plan at all. None. They're very myopic, very short term oriented. And . . its part of how they get caught. We avoid association with most of them. You can read it on them right away. My dad and I seldom talk to them ourselves. Most of 'em have never seen us, only the other two guys you saw in the office. You're kind of an exception."

There was a long pause as Park whipped the wheel around to the right getting through a light just before it turned red and then zooming ahead of some more cars before pulling up in front of Les Amis, a very expensive restaurant X had only heard about, on Orchard Road. Park braked hard, the car almost skidding to the curb then flipped the keys to a valet as he bounded out of the car and jogged to the entrance. X just followed behind him. He realized he didn't know just what this world of wealth and privilege was like so he decided to just follow in this guy's wake and assume that everything he did was perfectly natural.

Park walked right in past the maitre d, glanced across the room and then veered to one side and took a seat at the bar. He ordered a bottle of champagne and a steak dinner from the menu in french. X said he'd have the same. He noticed that the waiters and bartender all seemed to recognize Park and with no small delight.

Park continued as if there had been no interruption. "We know that you don't spend your money. My dad really likes that. Shows long term vision. We're not sure where you have it. Don't worry, we wouldn't take it from you. But you haven't been spending it," he said as the sommelier arrived, pulled the cork and presented it to Park. The boy sniffed it, nodded and the man poured two glasses of champagne. "You wouldn't believe the fucked up idiots our organization sees and we're at the top of the food chain!" he chuckled then took a gulp of champagne. "Somebody pulls an intricate job and then he spends the dough like he's actually trying to get caught."

Park stood up and waved one hand over his head, "Oh, police! Here I am!"

X chuckled. "What am I gonna do with it right now, anyway? I'm 14."

Park smiled and took a gulp of wine. "Dry," he said holding it up. "I like it much better than brut. Why shouldn't champagne be sweet?"

X took a gulp. It was very good, almost impossibly better than that wine that Hao's parents served at special occasions."What's . . brut?"

Park smiled. "So there are things you don't know? That's reassuring. Anyway, brut is a gradation of champagne. The least sweet is brut. The next least sweet is extra dry then dry then demi-sec then sec. They try to tell everybody that you're not sophisticated unless you like the least sweet champagne, the brut. Well, I know what I like and I don't care whether supposed experts say otherwise."

X took another gulp of his champagne. "I like it, too."

"I'll show you," said Park and he flagged down a waiter. "Have you already got a bottle of brut open?" he asked.

The waiter nodded.

"Please, get a glass for my friend here," he said gesturing to X.

When the waiter returned with another flute of champagne, X took a gulp. He made a bitter face. "That tastes like dishwater by comparison," he said putting the flute with the brut down on the bar and then pushing it as far away from him as possible.

Park laughed. "See! Don't listen to experts. Experts are just people consulted by lazy bastards who don't want to think for themselves. If you won't think for yourself you'll get taken by some guy who will. Hell, all the experts in our business would say that you shouldn't even exist. Fuck them!"

X laughed.

"And, all the experts in our business would say we should never trust you, that you're a rat for the cops."

X's eyes went wide. He shook his head. No. No way, man!

Park laughed as the waiter delivered their salads. "We already checked you out. Your own mom doesn't know you as well as we do," he said as he speared some greens and a shrimp and gobbled them up. " . . . I gotta tell you that the whole good boy at school thing had my dad's guy Wong worried. Invested in the system is how he put it. Fucking valedictorian of your class. I'm impressed."

X just shrugged as he dug into his salad.

"But we talked to that sad excuse for a leader of that gang you're kind of affiliated with. We got some info from him. We talked to the old man you apprentice under. And we talked to our guy in the Geylang precinct house. We even got footage of you whizzing on that cop's hat," said Park before breaking into laughter and then taking a couple bites from his salad.

"What?! How?"

Park finished chewing his food and swallowed. "Security camera for the construction company building that apartment complex that that 12 foot high fence surrounded. We're a silent partner in the real estate investment trust that owns it. There's always some pilfering of construction materials, maybe 1% but they had unusually high pilfering on that site so they kept the tapes to try and figure out who was doing it. We heard about you being chased by that cop and looked for it in the video. We finally found the footage of that cop chasing you. The way you jumped up that fence was pretty fucking impressive, man. And then to just, once you were on the other side of the fence, . . whip it out in broad daylight in front of him and piss on his hat," Park doubled over laughing and clapping, "that was great!"

X only smiled. "I was pretty angry by that point. At our gang as much as at the cop. Tattoos didn't tell me that cop was some kind of distance running champion in his school days. They just said I had to steal his hat as an initiation."

Park smiled. "Gang membership is good at first but it always brings you down in the end." He speared a slice of tomato and another shrimp and hungrily devoured them. "You get the strength of all the other members but you're also vulnerable to all their weaknesses. Anyway. We did our homework on you. Even other kids from your school said, 'Oh yeah, X gets great grades but the teachers hate him and he hates them'. Not just one kid. Three different kids all the same message. They hate X. X hates them. We have the clamps on one of your teachers. He's a gambling addict. We asked him about you. Man, he does not like you," snickered Park. "He thinks you're the fucking devil or something. So, we were pretty confident that you weren't the type to be a snitch for the cops."

"But you checked in with your guy in the Geylang precinct house after the first time I met with you and your dad to see if they suddenly had new information on you just to be sure, right?"

Park nodded through more laughter and speared some more greens from his salad. "Of course! We don't stay where we are by not using our resources." As X watched, Park waved for the Maitre d to approach them. "Is the booth in the corner free now?"

The Maitre d bowed and scraped. Of course sir. Yes sir. We would have gotten one for you when you came in if you'd just asked.

X saw that Park was accustomed to these shows of deference but he wasn't a jerk about them. He didn't humiliate anyone or wallow in his own importance. He patted the maitre d on the shoulder. "I know, Paul. But I wanted the navy leather booth in the corner so that my friend and I could discuss business in private."

"It's free now, sir. It's yours."

"Thank you," said Park and he deftly slipped a 100 singapore dollar bill into the maitre d's hand so smoothly that you wouldn't have seen it unless you were looking for it. Park picked up the champagne bottle and his glass and waved for X to follow him. As they were walking to the back of the restaurant, their entrees were coming out of the kitchen. With just Park's glance at the waiter he turned and followed them to their booth.

Both slender boys dug into their meals with gusto and there was little talk for the next few minutes beyond small talk about the meals. X asked a few questions about the Singapore police. Park described them as having a pretty much standard level of corruption. Taipei's cops are pure corruption, said Park. One hundred percent on the take, he laughed. All Taiwan was like that he said, just waiting to be bent. Seoul's cops were pretty fricking straight by comparison. Hong Kong's were a little more malleable than Singapore's. Macau in China and Chennai and some of the other cities in India are almost as bad as Taipei. He went on to grade the overall corruption of all the big cities of southeast Asia for X, but eventually tired of the subject.

"So, how'd you know to come to us with your swag?" asked Park after a gulp of champagne to chase down more food.

"The old man," said X. "He said you guys might kick me out but that you'd never flip on me."

Park nodded his head at the compliment.

"So, tell me about your association with that old man. Our guys liked that. He had a big rep at one time, your old man, not a, you know, thug, tough guy rep, which, incidentally, you have a surprisingly big rep for given that you barely outweigh me, but a rep for being the indispensable guy, the guy who figured things out. Alarms, weapons, even legal shit. He once got one of the gang's guys out on a technicality that the gang's lawyer hadn't noticed. That gang," Park shook his head. "The-the membership before the ones there now, they let him down. Still they were better than that loser running it now. The dude with all the tattoos? You know why he's still there? You know why he's not in jail with Tam and Koh and the rest? Not because he turned rat or anything. He's out because the cops forgot to include him in the indictments because he's such a nothing!" Park shook his head contemptuously and ate a few more bites. "So, anyway, how did you come to be the old man's protege?"

"What's there to say? I could tell from the way they all talked about him that the old man knew a lot of stuff. I wanted to learn. So, I made myself useful to the old man in return for lessons. I-I knew I'd need a lot of lessons, all the lessons I could get."

"Mmm-hmm. Is that because of where you're going with all this?"

X nodded.

Park, sighed. The thieves who didn't have anything going on wanted to talk about themselves non stop. This guy didn't want to give you anything. Eating with his fork in one hand Park made a gesture with the other, his hand making circles in the air. Go on. Keep going. Let's hear it.

X hesitated then finally spoke. "I'm gonna hurt the people who can't be hurt."

Park looked him in the eye. X was dead serious. Park burst into laughter and clapped, not at a joke but the audacity. He patted X's shoulder. "I love you, man! Who the fuck would say something like that?! This is why you and me have to stick together," he said. "Me and my dad? We can be hurt. We're not high enough up in the food chain to where we can't be hurt. It wouldn't be easy but it could happen. But you want to hurt the people with a lot more money than us that police and governments all protect? The ones that have whole governments on the fucking dole? Is that what you want to do?"

X nodded without a trace of mirth in his face or eyes. "And the cops and government who protect them."

Park leaned back in the booth with a deep exhale thinking it through. His eyes went back and forth across the table processing explanations. "You're a-a vengeance guy, aren't you? That's it, isn't it? You're like Edmond Dantes and you're gonna go all Count of Monte Christo on these guys."

X gave a sort of half shrug as if to say, close enough. His eyes met Park's. For almost a minute Park said nothing, not laughing any more, not even smiling.

"Because of your dad, right?" he muttered.

X nodded. Park wanted him to explain further but X would not say a word more.

In a bit of good timing, the waiter came by at that moment to ask how things were and see if they wanted a dessert menu. Park assured him that everything was great and said they would. They spent the rest of the meal in small talk about their steaks and their desserts. Park taught X about what was in a mille-feuille and explained some more about champagnes and then when it was time to settle up laughed at X reaching for his wallet and left a sheaf of 100 Singapore dollar bills on the table.

Outside, the valet guy practically sprinted to Park's car and quickly brought it back. Another large bill passed into the valet's hand with a smoothness a magician couldn't have bettered as the keys passed into Park's. Park zoomed through the streets starting east toward the Geylang district of Singapore. X had to put a hand on his shoulder and half shout over the wind whipping around them. "Hey, man. I don't live with my mother any more. I'm with the Singapore Ballet School."

Park skidded to a halt in the breakdown lane of a boulevard leaving a skid mark path from the fast lane to the car.  
"What?!"

"Last week. I got a scholarship. I live there now, at the ballet school, back over on Waterloo," he said, pointing over Park's shoulder in the direction of it.

"Seriously, dude? You?! Ballet?"

X nodded.

"I thought all those guys were, well . . . you know. I never got that vibe from you," said Park before hastily adding, "Hey, if you are that's-"

"I'm not," X chuckled. It's a way for me to get out of the gang and into Singapore high society."

Park nodded though his brow was still deeply furrowed.

"And I'm really good at it. I can really jump. I-"

"I saw that with how you went over that fence," said Park before pausing. "So . . you . . . wear the-the tights with the seam . . ?" Park lifted his butt off the driver's seat.

X sighed and nodded as Park laughed.

"Wow, dude. That's some serious commitment to a cover."

X laughed. "It's not just a cover. Like I said, I'm really good at it. I like it. And it's not so bad, always being surrounded by pretty girls in tights, too."

"I suppose," conceded Park.

"Anyways, at first it was the only way to be with this one beautiful girl. But, right away, I could see that it was a way to slingshot past the whole gang thing. The old man told me how the gang would bring me down if I stayed in it. But it would've been hard for me to stay on Sims Avenue and leave the gang. This works for that and it gets me into high society,too. I'm a fucking artiste now, Park" he laughed and Park guffawed along with him.

"Thief-artiste!" laughed Park before pulling a U turn and zooming over to Waterloo and coming to another skidding stop at the curb in front of the school. He and X shared another solemn handshake. No one had to say anything.

My man Park, chuckled X to himself.

Then he went over a few of the points in the ten pages of notes he'd discussed with Park as he edged toward the rail of the window washing rig. He removed the coiled cable and attached hooks to the underside of the rig. He glanced left and right. Neither window washer had reacted at all to the twin metallic sounds. He climbed over the rail of the rig and descended toward his target.


	2. Stealing gold from a crooked bank

The thing about having an invisibility function in your form fitting battle suit is that it can be a little disorienting. You can't see yourself, either.

For the most part this isn't a huge problem. If you were running, say away from some cops responding to an alarm or a group of dumb teen "heroes" it wasn't as though you'd normally stare at your feet hitting the pavement. You didn't. But you saw your arms and legs and if you lost your balance a bit, say because you ran across debris created by some jealous little jerk's exploding birdarang, you didn't have that extra bit of confirmation that seeing your own arms and legs in your peripheral vision gave you.

Or, more relevant at the moment, let's say you were descending from a window washing rig on a 40 story building. You would look down and see . . . a distant, looming sidewalk not your own torso or legs or feet, only the sidewalk below. You look straight across at the glass facade of the building as you're descending and you see . . nothing reflected in the glass, only a specially made cable but nothing hanging onto it. You look up and you see that there's a loop in the cable where there seems to be great tension but not your arm or glove. There's no reason for it.

And then the wind kicks up and you sway back and forth like crazy. At least that's how it feels. But you can't see your body going back and forth like a pendulum. You're invisible. It could be tough. But Red X had incredible body control and he was used to it.

He was down to where he wanted to be now, just one floor up from the target window.

"Computer! Confirm transmission of pacifying footage to J.P. Sachs Bank tower security system," he said into his mask.

"Transmission confirmed," said Scarlett Johansson's voice in X's ears. He'd reprogrammed it from that sterile robotic voice the little bat had used to something he liked much better.

This was a crucial point in the plan. If the security system wasn't seeing the fake feed of the vault room then X would have to do this job on a strict timer as a smash and grab and fight his way out past this corrupt bank's security goons, the cops and maybe this town's junior justice league. He didn't want to do it that way on a contract job where there was one more tie to him than usual.

The night before, he'd hacked the J.P. Sachs security system and downloaded an hour's worth of footage from the two cameras in the 10th floor vault room. He'd copied it several times over and had set things up so that this dummy footage played over and over again. If some fat, doughnut eating security guy gave an occasional glance at the feeds from the two cameras in the vault room, he'd see the view from 8 p.m. to 9 p.m. last night over and over again for a month.

In case something somehow went wrong with the input of the dummy footage, X set it on a timer so that it didn't do it till just before he went in. If it didn't work he'd just do this thing the hard way. But everything was quiet, so he trusted Scarlett Johansson.

He lowered himself one floor further till he was opposite the particular 10th floor window he wanted to enter and then extended a saw blade out of his left glove. The blade whirred at an extremely high speed and the blade had been specially chosen for cutting glass.

Zzzzzzzzt! Zzzzzzzzt! Zzzzzzzt! Zzzzzzzt!

With four swipes, he expertly sawed through the glass in four lines making the outlines of a square a little over two feet on each side. The now loosened square of glass was still in place but teetering. X retracted the saw blade and lowered himself a few feet on the cable. Now, he reached out to the top of the cut piece of glass and put the palm of one glove to the glass and activated the air vacuum feature. The glass held tight against the glove like his whole palm was one big suction cup. X pushed the glass in toward the building interior and gently lowered it to the floor.

X swung himself back and forth holding onto the cable with one arm, got first one foot then the other inside the opening in the glass. A set of blinds was blocking the way so X didn't jump in but carefully stepped inside and then worked his way around the blinds. He first raised the blinds then discharged a little glue from one glove around the edge of the glass and carefully put the glass square back into place. He waited a few seconds before giving it a tap. It stayed in place. He lowered the blinds and then angled them to keep light out and ward off any prying eyes. The window was good as new except for the faintly visible line around the edges of where X had cut it.

Now, X turned off the suit's cloaking function and turned to assess the room in which he was standing. Not surprisingly, it looked just like the security footage he'd stolen last night. It measured 20 feet in from the window and 15 feet in the other direction. There were plain, floor to ceiling stainless steel shelves against one wall and waist high stainless steel shelves flanking a Worthington 2000 safe on the other side. There were file folders here and there on all of the shelves in no particular pattern.

X approached the Worthington 2000 grabbing the edges at both sides in his gloved hands. He was almost feeling out his big dumb opponent, this stupid cube of special metals with a matte black finish. He'd seen the 'Worthington 2000' label when looking at the security footage the night before. For most crooks, this was a show stopper. Even the best safe crackers couldn't always beat the 1000. The new 2000 was stronger still. Two years after its release no one had reported beating one. There weren't even fake, bravado fed claims of beating one in the rumor mill. No one had been able to crack it open with explosives, or heat lances or beating the combination lock. X was pretty sure he could handle it one way or another but he wanted to be as quiet as possible. This was a stealth job. Get in. Get out. Three days later these crooked pricks realize they were robbed and look around bewildered. Huh?!

This had been a big part of his prepping the night before. How can I beat a Worthington 2000? He had a practice safe in his apartment, one with really hard to work tumblers. He spent a half hour practicing on it. He spent another hour going over the scraps of information he had about the 2000's and how he could physically beat it. Saw? An "X" with just the right plasma infusion to melt through the sides of the safe? But how would he do that and not ruin some of its contents?

Beating the lock was by far the best option of that was possible. But no one had so far. Of course, Red X had never been one of the contestants. He flexed his long, gloved fingers and turned up the hearing sensitivity in the suit to maximum to hear the tumblers of the combination lock. The hum of the building's electrical and ventilation systems suddenly became audible. He could hear the woman on the floor above him singing along to Someone Like You by Adele on the radio. He could hear the typing cadence of the guy in the nearest room to one side. Tak tak taktaktak tak tak taktaktaktaktak . . . tak tak.

He had just leaned against the door and was going to give the combination lock a try when he noticed the folder on the table closest to the safe. He could see a green 47 at one edge of a sheet of paper and the Worthington letterhead at the top of the sheet. He'd seen these sheets before.

He chuckled. His own laughter sounded like he was standing in front of the amps at the sound check of a heavy metal concert listening to the guitarist laugh.

No?! Really? Really?!

He turned the sound in the suit back to normal and straightened up. He reached for the folder and then chuckled again.

It was.

Well, hell. Some people deserve to be robbed. The overpaid dipshits at the bank had left the combination right next to the safe. X snickered as he spun the dial to the seven numbers in sequence.

" . . and then to the left to . . . 47!"

There was a click audible to him even with the suit's sound set back at normal. X turned the waist high brass handle. Yes! The right side safe door opened. X pulled the left one open, too.

He grinned behind his mask. The six foot high safe was three feet deep and six feet wide. There were some shelves on top with bundles of cash, a mix of american dollars, chinese yuan and euros, too. At least a half million of each. There were also what looked like bearer bonds and some other documents in large brown folders wrapped in giant elastics. He'd go through all those later.

But the bottom two thirds of the safe was full of gold, beautiful, luminescent gold, money in its distilled form, gold. With the opening of the doors, and the crappy ceiling lights shining off the bars, the whole room turned yellow-orange. The sparse furnishing suddenly looked beautiful.

X laughed. There was definitely more than Park had led him to believe he'd find. The bars were stacked two deep in from the door and he counted " . . six, seven, eight!" high and " . . seven, eight, nine, ten!" across, left to right. X gave such a big grin behind his skull mask that he was almost surprised it didn't come off no matter how strong the magnetizing current was. There were 160 bars! One hundred and sixty! Each bar was 400 ounces, a slender brick of pure money. Sixty four thousand ounces. This was something like 10 times as much as Park had said there would be. Ten times! Jesus, why didn't these fuckers just give the billionaire his gold?

Too late now! X laughed to himself. The billionaire was going to get his gold and there was going to be much more than that left over for him and Park to split.

X reproached himself now for putting time into these thoughts. Losers counted the loot too early. Get the fuck out with it, you idiot!

"Computer!" he commanded with renewed purpose. "Bring express elevator number two to the eleventh floor and notify me when it's there."

"Command acknowledged," purred the voice of Scarlett Johansson.

X had looked at every possible escape route in planning this job. Teleporting was obviously the way to go with this one but the suit had an effective range of just 150 feet. That was with nothing but him and his 165 pounds. The range went down the more he tried to carry with him. He'd thought of teleporting to a van parked in the street. But there was no parking allowed in the street nearest to this room. Too much of a red flag.

He'd then thought of teleporting straight to the parking garage below the bank. But it was under the other side of the bank. And, again, the combination of his own 165 pounds and anything more than a couple bars was going to be impossible at that distance. And he couldn't teleport 50 times. The teleportation system was a huge drain on the Xenothium plasma power source.

Then, he'd thought of the elevator pit. Of course! Even if the elevator was at the lowest possible floor, there was a six foot depth in the shaft down into which the box never dropped. It was only accessible through a utility room. X liked this as a spot to which to transfer all the bars. The only problem was that there was some kind of electrical transformer on the ground floor and first floor blocking the line between this room and all the elevator pits. Teleporting through a strong electrical field was a big no-no.

So, X had to improvise. It was only about 50 feet from the 10th floor vault room straight across to a spot in the air below the elevator if it was opening at the 11th floor. He'd teleport to a spot below the elevator, grab on and then get the elevator to bring him and his gold down to the elevator pit.

The first step was hacking the building's elevator control system the night before. This was relatively easy.

"Express elevator two is in place," declared Scarlett Johansson in X's ears.

X looked at the stacks of bars trying to gauge how many he could handle. He removed the mesh sack from the underside of his cape and quietly dropped 5 bars in. He steadied himself. The suit could teleport if you were running but used less xenothium if you were standing still, something about less energy to process transfer from consistent coordinates.

"Activate teleporter and transfer to Jump City pre-set node 41," said X into the mask. He closed his eyes. Teleporting would blind you for a couple seconds if you didn't.

One moment he was standing on the floor of the vault room. The next he appeared in thin air below the express elevator.

"Aaah!" he grabbed for one of the bars under the elevator and braced for the sudden tug as gravity pulled hard on the bag of gold bars that no longer had a floor below it.

"Computer! Take this elevator down to level B3," he commanded as he gently swayed back and forth, the strain of holding himself and a bag of gold bars only a little less than his own weight with one arm making the command something of a grunt.

Woosh! The elevator dropped, the rate of descent seeming awfully similar to free fall to X. But just as it got near the bottom of the shaft it stopped and X let go and stepped onto the dirty elevator pit bottom. He quickly disgorged the gold bars from the bag, grabbed hold again and commanded the computer to bring the elevator back up to the 11th floor. From there he teleported back to the vault room on the 10th floor.

After hacking the elevator control system the night before, X had gone to the building in stealth mode and gotten into the elevator pit of the one closest to the vault room and taken it up to the 11th floor. Then he'd had the computer lock in those coordinates. You couldn't just teleport to any place. It wasn't like clicking on google maps or something and picking a location anywhere in the world. The suit had to have three dimensional coordinates. It had to be able to precisely relate where you were to where you were going. Every time it had locked in a new set of coordinates that was another node the wearer of the suit could jump to, if he was within range of it. X had another 40 nodes spread around Jump City. He had dozens more in other cities around the world.

Back in the vault room, he realized he had to take more bars each trip. He worked the draw string of the bag around his neck and loaded the bag up as much as he could. And by having the bag tied around his neck he'd be able to grab onto the underside of the elevator with both hands. The elevator shaft was only 50 feet away from the vault room. He even moved right beside the door to make the teleport that much easier. Still, he needed ten more trips to move all the bars. On the last one, he grabbed all the cash and the other documents in the vault.

When he was, finally, down in the elevator pit with the last of the bars he commanded the computer to let the express elevator go and to disengage from the building's utility system.

He gave a deep, slow, satisfying exhale then checked at his belt to confirm the readout visible in his peripheral vision within the mask. The blue bar indicator at the edge of what he could see with his left eye was way over to the left and said 27%.

To confirm this, he pried off the utility belt cover and saw that the xenothium in the storage tubes indeed looked to be about three quarters gone. He'd never done so many teleports in one session so it wasn't surprising that the pulsing red plasma was mostly gone from the tubes in his belt. Just before teleporting out of the vault room for the last time he'd closed the safe and dropped the blinds over the window. Everything looked pretty much as it must have before he entered.

He looked at the time display of hours, minutes and seconds in red at the edge of his right eye peripheral vision. He was a little behind schedule. But he still had an extra hour before he needed to be heading back to the ballet. He hadn't expected to make more than three trips from the secret vault room down to the elevator pit and he'd made 11. He had a bread truck parked in the nearest parking space of the garage but he couldn't get all this gold to it, not right now. For one thing, he needed more xenothium if he was going to do a bunch more teleports. Quickly doing the math, he realized that he'd moved over 4,300 pounds of gold to the elevator pit not just the 400 that Park's intel had led him to believe he might.

He stood there in the elevator pit pondering what to do tapping gloved index finger at the spot where a mouth would have been on his skull mask over and over. Take just the billionaire's 200 pounds now and come back to get the rest later? Take everything he could know, drawing the xenothium plasma down as low as he dared? He went back and forth, unable to decide what to do.

Then, a thought occurred to him. That garage had been in pretty shitty condition. Was there even a camera covering this area?

X teleported to the van and put on dark blue work pants, a gray shirt with the name "Tony" over one chest pocket, fake glasses and a salt and pepper wig in the back of the bread truck. He stepped to the front of it and out the door. He let out a big belch and scratched at his crotch while looking around the garage. He'd seen one camera on the far wall of the place when he drove in. Were there any others?

X walked the entire perimeter of that level of the garage. There were only two other cars filling 150 or 200 spaces and those two cars had the distinct look of having been abandoned. It turned out there weren't any other cameras and X carefully inspected the one camera there was near the ramp down to this level. Somebody had hit it with a bat or a stick so that it faced into the wall and they had spray painted partly over it as part of a, X turned his head to one side to see it, JRobb96 graffiti tag.

X grinned. Ahh, vandals. Salt of the wound or maybe it was earth. Whatever. They'd done a good deed for him. X marched back to the truck. There was no one around on this level of the garage, but just the same he would keep up appearances as Tony.

He opened the back of the truck and extended two little ramps thankful that he'd filled the truck's tires with air to the prescribed pressure limit. He rolled a dolly he'd left in the back of the truck down to the concrete garage floor and then over to the garage exit and the utility room. It took him 12 trips but he managed to load all the gold onto the truck in a little over 20 minutes. He covered the gold bars with a black tarp and moved the rest of the contents around so that it looked like any other delivery truck. Gold bars don't take up a lot of space for their weight. So it wasn't that hard.

X beamed as he slowly drove the truck out of the garage and onto the streets of Jump City. He couldn't suppress a laugh of triumph as he left J.P. Sachs property.

"Take that you too big to fail motherfuckers!" chirped X and started winding his way through the streets of Jump City.

Now, he had another tough decision. Where to go with all this, he wondered, glancing back toward the gold under the tarp. He sighed. Paradoxically, there was only one place that he felt safe leaving a gargantuan haul like this, the police impound lot.

Two blocks away from it, X changed out of his Tony the delivery guy outfit into a JCPD uniform. He stopped at the entrance to the lot and talked to the guy. The officer in the booth could not have shown less interest.

"Bread, huh?" He mumbled as he signed the form X put on the counter in front of him, a copy of the usual JCPD form for something like this.

"Yeah, got used in some kind of drug thing," X offered listlessly as he signed a sheet on the counter at the entrance to the booth. And with that, the guy went back to watching a football game and texting his girlfriend.

X drove the van to the far end of the lot and backed it up against the chain link fence at the property boundary. He also took the precaution of popping the hood and quickly removing two crucial wires. No one was going to move this van.

X marched quickly out of the lot, waving to the guy at the booth he was staring, spellbound, at his little tv. Two blocks from the property he flagged down a cab. He gave the driver an address a block from the Jump City Ballet company and minutes later emerged from the men's dressing room resplendent in his costume as Romeo for the dress rehearsal. He grinned at Natasha, his Juliet and pulled her to his side for a hug.

She picked up a smile from him and whispered in his ear with her thick Russian accent. "I vish I knew how you vere alvays so hippy, Ix."

"Sometimes there's justice in the world, 'Tasha," he smiled.


	3. Lone wolf and perfect partner

X had a wonderful time at ballet rehearsal that afternoon. First of all, just after entering the studio, he noticed that Stephanie, a flighty american ballerina, just a corps member, not a soloist or a principle, had left her laptop in the cubby hole shelving in the hallway outside the studio, again,

Months back, X had walked by once as she was logging onto her fanfiction account. He'd seen the name and her password. With his photographic memory, it was locked in. She was known for leaving her laptop there, in the hallway. X glanced around now and, seeing no one, grinned. He had to communicate with Park. They hadn't planned on nearly this much of a haul of gold. He could have used one of his untraceable accounts to enter the review but he preferred this if possible.

Park had balked at this method of communication at first. "You want me to what?!" But it presented a sly way for X to get a message to his young crime boss friend. X signed on to Fanfiction as SpinningGirl91, Stephanie's name on the site. Then he went to Park's story about Spiderman, written by SeoulMan and left a review.

THIS LATEST CHAPTER SURPRISED ME. I GOT TEN TIMES MORE OUT OF IT THAN I THOUGHT I WOULD AT FIRST! TEN TIMES! I'M NOT EVEN SURE HOW TO DEAL WITH HOW HAPPY THIS MAKES ME FEEL! WRITE MORE ASAP!1!

He was sure Park would understand.

X quickly erased that action from the laptop's history. Stephanie would be able to see a review that she hadn't written if she checked her history but so what? It'd be chalked up to some kind of error of the Fanfiction site. X made his way back into the studio. He couldn't wait for that day's rehearsal.

Some people who live completely in the moment, in part of their life, balance that out by slacking off or daydreaming or living completely unfocused in the rest of their life. X wasn't like that.

When he was in the middle of planning or executing a job in the secret part of his life he found himself bursting with energy and intensity for dancing, too, the focus spilling over and continuing to the rest of his life, not being used up by his hours as a superthief. And this was special because he was going to dance Romeo the next night with Natasha as Juliet.

Like most every ballet company, Jump City Ballet rotated male and female dancers in and out of the starring roles. In the course of a two week run of Romeo and Juliet, a half dozen different guys were Romeo. A half dozen different ballerinas were Juliet. The company could choose who to match with whom in the romantic ballets. They now were matching X with superstar Natasha Suvarov. Like X she was a visiting artist at the Jump City Ballet. But she was already a star. When X had first taken ballet at the dance school a mile from where he lived in Singapore, there were posters of Natasha Suvarov on the wall. The girls idolized her. Six years later X got to dance with her. She was still a huge star in ballet. And X was very much attracted to her. He found slender Natasha with her exotic features, all high cheekbones and almond shaped eyes completely alluring. It was so much easier to portray attraction when you really felt it.

To his surprise, as X got to know her he found that beautiful Natasha didn't revel in or even much get to enjoy her star status. She was now 30 and saw herself as having only a couple more years at the top. To his amazement, after getting to know her, X would have said that the great Natasha Suvarov felt as though she was under great and constant pressure from a surprising source. She felt as though she was stalked relentlessly by her own legend, by all the past wonderful performances of . . Natasha Suvarov. No actual person could live up to the legend that had been created around her name.

Prompted by nothing, she had once turned to X in the middle of morning class and remarked, in her thick Russian accent, "Legend grows aboot your name and in mind of creetics you never made slightest meestake before," she said, waving one finger in the air dismissively. "Nayver once failed to have perfectly clean performance. Nayver once! Reedicoolous! You make slightest meestake now and creetics say, 'Oh! Not vhat she used to be! Not vhat she used to be!"

She let out a deeply fatigued sigh. X looked around the mirror lined room. He felt terrible for her. She was in such pain. Wasn't someone going to say something or do something?!

Finally, X leaned forward and rested his hand on hers and looked her in the eyes sure that the great sympathy that he was feeling for her was being communicated. He didn't say anything, not one word. But after a minute, she just gave a sigh and threw herself into her stretching and exercises. X was kind of shocked that he was the one to do it. At the Singapore and Hong Kong ballet companies he was sure that one of the veterans would have consoled Natasha or a choreographer or one of the other staff. It wouldn't have been the 20 year old new guy.

At first he was just the handsome, young asian guy to her. But X was rapidly advancing in the hierarchy of the Jump City Ballet. No one at JCB could leap like X. No one could spin like X or had his precise body control. None of the other guys had his charisma or looks. Audiences loved X. And to the delight of the ballerinas, X turned out to be a natural at partnering them. The choreographer was trying different combinations of partners in class one day, six different guys and six different ballerinas. They wanted to try to see which pairs of dancers worked best with each other but more than anything they were quietly desperate to find who could work well with Natasha. She and the company's star male dancers, Stefan, Greg, Devon and Mikhail, were like oil and water. They had gone through five other guys dancing with her before they let X try.

It was a perfect match right off the bat. Natasha and X had exactly the same instincts for what to emphasize, what to speed up, what to slow down. They moved in exact synch from the first note of the studio piano. There were six couples dancing the same steps of Romeo and Juliet in the studio but after a minute the others stopped and just stood watching while X and Natasha continued, not just executing the steps but living them without ever having danced with each other before.

When the music finally stopped, she grinned and patted X's muscular shoulder and crowed in the direction of the (director) "Thees vun!"

It was obvious to anyone. She and X were perfect together. She was too tall for the shorter guys and she was so long legged and slender that there was almost too much contrast to the guys with big, muscular thighs. They looked slightly bizarre next to her. She and slender X were a perfect match. Though she was russian and he was three quarters chinese, his strong cheekboned look complimented her own. Everything they did together looked natural, as though they had a kind of telepathy.

The company's directors saw it and now tried to have X partner her instead of any of the others. It had caused some friction among the ballerinas. The sad truth was that, unlike guest artist Xavier Li, none of the company's star males were very good partners. Stefan was too weak. Devon had no enthusiasm for anything to do with girls. Partnering was the one weak spot of Mikhail's game. Trent was known as "the jabber" for the rough way he always reached for the ballerinas with hard, sharp hands. Marcel was just too short. Greg didn't like making an effort to accentuate how pretty anyone else was.

X loved partnering the ballerinas, holding these beautiful women to his side. It was one of the ways a guy in ballet could show off his physical strength. The ballerinas were always shocked at how strong slender X was, how easily he could carry them. And he had an instinctive feel for making them feel comfortable and making it look effortless to carry them across the stage. X made it look like nothing to lift the heaviest of the ballerinas while some of the other guys made it look like a herculean task to partner the lightest. When X had his hands on one of the ballerinas he felt as though he could completely master their balance as well. He never quite understood how the other guys screwed up their partnering as much as they did.

"It's your fucking job, to make her look great," he'd muttered audibly in front of the whole company as Devon was complaining, yet again, to the company choreographer about how difficult the Jump City Ballet's girls supposedly were to deal with, trying to push his failures off on them. Devon had taken one angry step toward X then stopped. X had looked him in the eyes. Don't even think of it you snobby little brit!

Devon gulped and backed away, glanced back fearfully once more and, while the other dancers snickered at his retreat, stuttered an even weaker sounding pleading with the choreographer.

X became Natasha's partner on stage and, perhaps inevitably, off. To their mutual delight, they proved to be a perfect match in every physical activity. They didn't flaunt their relationship but they didn't do anything to hide it, either. In class, during rehearsals and at public appearances, X and Natasha Suvarov would always be side by side. But it wasn't a round the clock sort of relationship. X would disappear for a few hours to, oh, hack into a bank's security system and later to, oh, don a form fitting battle suit and steel thousands of pounds of gold from a corrupt bank. Every time he would tell Natasha, "I have to take care of something", never any more explanation than that, never any other words but those.

Natasha would only shrug. This surprised X. They got along so well together. He had expected her to try to take more and more of his time. She didn't. But he noticed she always gave a cursory sniff after he came back from one of these unexplained absences as though seeing if she could detect the scent of another woman on him.

Natasha wasn't very insecure that way. But, now, she was a bit insecure about dancing the role of Juliet, a girl in her teens, because she was 30 herself. X took her aside in the studio and whispered in her ear about how beautiful she was. He kissed her and rubbed her back then whispered some more to her. He held her body against his and shuffled slowly around the studio floor. He finished by looking right into her eyes and slowly breaking into a grin that she took up as well. He kissed her then whispered in her ear, "Tasha! How could you ever fear that your beauty won't measure up?"

He kissed her again. She sighed and walked away and danced Juliet's solo with a fire that the staff had never seen before. She finished and they forgot where they were and what was supposed to happen next. They'd heard bad things about how Natasha had been with the Royal Ballet in her year as a guest artist before this. There were whispers of a tempermental diva attitude and more. But since Xavier Li had joined the Jump City Ballet, Natasha had been easy to work with. The staff was a little uneasy about her relationship with Xavier Li but the boy was a rising star and his presence brought out the best in her.

That night she and X got a series of thunderous standing ovations from the audience including from the Teen Titans in the audience. X had easily picked out Aqualad, Argent, Jinx and Kid Flash ten rows back from the stage. He smiled afterward at the notion that they were cheering a "villain". X hurried through the post performance interviews and then went home to his apartment, telling Natasha, still with a triumphant glow about her back stage afterward that he had something to take care of but that it would be very quick and that he'd be at her place in an hour.

X made his way back to his apartment and checked on the FanFiction site at that Spiderman story. SeoulMan had responded in the comments to the review by SpinningGirl91 that he would need at least 5 days to write something more. "Exams and reports due and you know, like life" SeoulMan had pleaded. X nodded slowly. All he could do was wait for Park to show up.

After one long sigh, the issue was out of his thoughts and he was on to Natasha's apartment where she greeted him with a smile that left no doubt how the night would go.


	4. Ballet dancer vs baller

After a couple years of being a ballet dancer, X completely identified as such, at least he did when he didn't have the Red X suit on. He hated hearing idiots casually mock dancers as weak or sissy boys. Ballet was not just a cover for him, though, yes, it was a great cover.

In Singapore, Hong Kong and now Jump City, X was keenly aware of the preconception that everyone had of male ballet dancers, that they were sissy boy wimps. He'd had scores of nearly identical encounters with strangers in all three cities at charity appearances, public relations events, ballet company ceremonies of various sorts and back stage after performances. He would be introduced to some man or woman or group of people and they would hear his deep bass voice and listen to him and watch him walk or just read his body language standing there or maybe see a ballerina walk up and kiss him and there would be a moment when he could almost read the thought balloons over their heads. "Oh, wait. He's . . . he's _not_ gay!"

So, when the commercial came up, X was more than happy to do it. He had no idea that it would go viral and become a youtube sensation with over 17 million hits in the first two months when he was first called to the company director's office.

The summons didn't seem like anything special. He'd been called up there a few times before. Xavier? Could you go up to the office and sign the insurance forms that go with your contract? Xavier? You have to go up to the office and sign that form refusing to have direct deposit of your check. X didn't want anyone else in his accounts. Xavier? Go see the company director. They want to ask you about appearing at a charity function.

It wasn't like he was being sent to the principal's office. It was nothing unusual. He just glided up the long spiral staircase from the rehearsal studio to the director's office still in his white tights and white and gold Mercutio top, the role he'd be dancing the next evening after just having been Romeo the previous night. He knocked on the door frame.

"Sir? I was told you wanted to see me," he said to the old, white haired man behind the desk, the Company Director just called "the director" by all the dancers.

The man gave a big smile at the sight of X and waved for him to enter. "Come in, Xavier. Come in," he said.

X strode in looking less at the director, whom he knew, than the three other men he could now see to his left along the bookcase at the side of the room.

"Xavier, this is Mr. Sinclair, the company's financial director," he said pointing to the first man, a heavy set middle aged man with thinning hair dyed as black as Xavier's who raised his hand slightly. "Mr. Cooper, the company's director of development," he said pointing to the man in the middle, a tall, thin, grinning man with red hair turning gray, "and Mr. Lang. Mr. Lang directs commercials." This last, nondescript man was younger than the others, perhaps mid 30's.

X bowed. Sinclair and Cooper were somewhat familiar to him. He'd at least seen them in the company's hallways. He tried to place Lang and then suddenly came up with it. He pointed at him.

"You were at the door during rehearsal on . . . Tuesday, weren't you? And then, that night you were in the . . fourth row, seated left of center as we faced the audience, weren't you?"

The man chuckled. "That's right. You're very observant," he turned to the director, Sinclair and Cooper. "That's right," he told them. "That's where I was."

"Another one of Xavier's many talents," said Cooper.

"I was very impressed with his leaping ability," said Lang nodding for emphasis. "I didn't know what to expect of ballet dancers but I was impressed. He was surprisingly strong, too. He lifted that Natasha girl like nothing. He made it look so easy."

"Xavier," the director resumed with a smile and a tone of magisterial generosity, "How would you like to appear in a commercial to promote Jump City Ballet?"

X grinned. "I'd like that very much."

But he turned back to Lang. "I saw you speaking to Greg after rehearsal," X said referring to Greg Andersen, a blond dancer but adding nothing more. Lang sighed and looked nervously back and forth at the director, Sinclair and Cooper. His facial expression went to contrition.

"We . . we thought Greg Andersen had the best . . look . . . for the ad."

"Because he's white and blond," chuckled X.

Lang sighed deeply, his expression now painfully contrite and Sinclair and Cooper hemmed and hawed excuses toward X.

He raised a hand, telling them to stop. "Hey. I understand how it is. This isn't Singapore and I didn't just become three quarters Chinese five minutes ago."

There were sighs of relief all around.

Just as the director was about to speak again, X heard approaching footsteps behind him and a whiny, nasal voice. "Sorry I'm late. Fucking Jump City traffic. Send for the next pretty b-. . . ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh."

X looked over his shoulders and saw this scrawny goateed guy's eyes angled downward, locked onto his buns.

For the next minute, X endured this little goateed guy circling around him openly gawking at how X looked before sputtering out a series of yes's at a rising pitch.

"Yes . . yes . . yes . . yes! Yes! Yes!"

"Simon!" he gasped to Mr. Lang before spinning back around and staring at X's face from inches away for several seconds and then rushing over to Mr. Lang and pointing back at X.

"This one is better. Yes, he's not blond. And there's the chinese thing. But he's pretty and not soft pretty like the blond one. Hard pretty. We can-we can work it right with this boy. We can get all of it with this boy," he said then turned quickly back to X with great intensity in his eyes.

"Just . . . tell us this," he said grinning up at X from a few inches away. He nodded toward the company director, Sinclair and Cooper. "They told me you're the best jumper in the company. Can you dunk a basketball?"

"Sure," X answered right away causing clapping from Goateed Guy, Lang and Cooper but Goateed Guy's expression clouded over and he spun back around to face X.

"Wait! . . you said that awfully casually. Have you? Have you ever dunked a basketball?"

"No. But I've seen some guys who have and I can outjump them."

More clapping and celebration.

"You really think Xavier is right for this spot?" asked the Director of Lang.

"If Darren thinks so, then he is," said Lang nodding toward Goateed Guy. "He's got a great eye for these sorts of things and creating visual concepts."

Darren gestured to X as if X wasn't there in the room as well, speaking of him as if he was absent. "Are you kidding? Cheekbones out the yinyang, an excellent jaw even if he's just a little long faced, big eyes even if they're asian with a nice moderation of the brown, V shaped torso over a tiny waist, a package that'd hold a canteloupe, none of that extra heavy thigh thing that a lot of dancers have and the most bootytastic . . . well, just look at him!" He twirled his hand in a circle directing X to turn around for them.

X remained facing them.

Goateed guy sighed toward Lang then turned back to X, over his shrieking now and back in serious mode. He paused before speaking.

"Okay, here's the deal, Xavier. You've heard of Pookie Randolph, right? What we-"

X shook his head. "I have no idea who that is."

Goateed sighed, even more smitten now."Love the voice. Did I mention I love his voice? Loveitloveitloveit! A young chinese Barry White!" he chirped upward at the ceiling before turning back to X. "Xavier. Pookie Randolph the playground legend? That Pookie Randolph." he repeated as if this was common knowledge that X must have just forgotten.

X shrugged.

"He led Jumpton High to the state finals his freshman year and state championships his sophomore, junior and senior years? Gonna play for Kansas. That Pookie Randolph?"

X shrugged.

"Only the greatest high school basketball player in the history of Jump City."

X was getting annoyed now. "Why in the world would I care about high school sports? I'm almost 21," he muttered.

Goateed Guy stepped forward toward X. "Doesn't matter. What we want . . . what we want is to film you playing against Pookie Randolph and, hopefully, get some footage of you doing something good, deflecting a shot or-or maybe even scoring and put that into an ad for the Jump City Ballet. Jump City Ballet, sure we're athletes, but we're artists, too."

X raised one eyebrow. He supposed it could be worse. And he really wanted to promote the ballet.

Cooper stepped forward. "Xavier. It's my mission to promote Jump City Ballet. I want JCB to be seen as the vibrant institution it is and not just a niche high culture attraction. I want-I want all our dancers to get credit for how amazing they are, you for how amazing you are. We want to film a commercial showing that your athleticism is . . is almost in the same league as-as Pookie Randolph. Darren and Simon," he pointed to Goateed Guy and Lang, have done work for ESPN, Mountain Dew and Vitajex. They're going to develop a clever, dynamic ad to get people to take a fresh look at Jump City Ballet."

X nodded assent to this idea.

"If we have to, we're willing to pay Pookie to let something happen that fits our script," said Lang to reassure X.

"Basketball, huh?" sniffed X, more than a little indignant now at their presumption that he wouldn't succeed against some high school boy named "Pookie".

"You . . . don't like basketball?" asked a worried Cooper.

"Nope."

"Have . . have you ever played, Xavier?" asked the Director.

X shook his head. "Not really. It's kind of a dumb game. The scoring's too easy and it puts too much of a premium on height. Say, how tall is this Poofie kid?"

"Pookie, Xavier. And he's just barely taller than you," said Cooper. "Six one and a half or six two to your six one."

"I'll kick his ass," laughed X.

For a moment the others were silent, not sure how to react. Then they burst into laughter, too. X's confidence reassured them a bit. He told them to just tell him when to be there and started to leave but Goateed Guy and Lang insisted on taking some pictures of X in costume. As they did, they argued. Lang wasn't sure about it but Goateed Guy was adamant that X should be in tights and the girls in tutus, he said. It has to be visually obvious that it's a ballet guy competing against a baller, he said. The story has to be understood without words, he said.

X asked if Natasha could be one of the ballerinas who was there. He saw the others glance toward Sinclair and Sinclair give them all a slight nod. See, I told you. X realized that they'd all been told about him and Natasha.

X maintained his casual attitude in front of them while Lang and Goateed Guy took photos from every conceivable angle, a disproportionate number of Goateed Guy's being taken from behind him. X maintained a front of icy cool indifference to his ogling. You got a certain amount of that as a guy in ballet. But, inside, a fire was already burning. He couldn't tell them just how insulting he found their talk that they would have to pay some stupid high school kid to let him do something good. Seriously?! He left the office and went down to the men's changing room and immediately showered and put on his street clothes.

He went back to his apartment and started compulsively watching every youtube clip he could find of this Pookie Randolph kid. He couldn't believe how many there were. Four hundred eighty seven?! Of a fucking high school kid! And then he heard the kid speak and he sounded, well, not abnormally stupid but certainly not bright. It just made X more mad. The whole fucking world is in thrall to this dumb kid who plays basketball well. Really?!

After a couple hours of that he left his apartment, went to a nearby sporting goods store and bought five basketballs. He carried four in a bag and tore the other one out of the box and dribbled it home to his apartment.

He watched hours more video of this Pookie Randolph kid on the big screen in his apartment living room, half of it while standing in ballet slippers and moving as if defending against him. He saw some clear tells in the kid's moves.

The next morning, he dribbled a basketball from his apartment to the ballet company's front door, tossing it behind some shrubbery next to the door as he entered and then picking it up as he left and dribbling home to his apartment building. There he watched more video of this kid, astounded at how much footage there was of some stupid high school boy who was good at basketball. "Like he's actually done anything that means anything!" X muttered in disgust looking at how many pages of youtube clips there were of this kid. Every additional page of listing of videos that X discovered was like another log on the fire of his desire to beat this kid.

The more X watched, the more he felt he knew exactly what Pookie was going to do before he did it. X had developed his sense of movement and an ability to analyze it in his 6 years of ballet. He had watched youtube videos of each of the ballerinas before he partnered her to get an idea how they liked to move. Dozens of times he stopped videos just before the kid started to drive for the hoop or pulled up for a shot and made himself try to guess what he would do. At first his guesses were right just over half the time. After a couple hours he was almost always right.

Now, X read about and watched videos about what good basketball defense was supposed to be. He decided that, in a way, it was like partnering a ballerina. You wanted to stay right with your opponent but always between him and the basket. X practiced in his apartment, visualizing the moves he'd seen Pookie Randolph use.

The next night, X snuck out in the middle of the night to the neglected basketball court beyond the tennis courts at his apartment building and practiced, 500 jump shots one night then 1000 the next. The third night he spent all his time practicing driving to the hoop over and over again. Faster and faster.

Finally, after a couple more days, Cooper, Lang and Goateed Guy told X in class one morning that they were going to shoot the commercial. They approached him as he was stretching at the barre. They said they'd contacted Pookie and they were going to try to shoot the spot the day after next at noon at the courts at Jumpton Park. Would that be okay?

X shrugged, sure, and asked what they had told Pookie about him. Almost nothing they said. They only told Pookie that a ballet dancer guy and four ballerinas would be there. They said that Pookie had been told he was supposed to play one on one against the guy.

X asked what Pookie's reaction had been, exactly what it had been. Exactly.

Goateed Guy and Lang had looked back and forth at each other before answering. Should we tell him?

You say it!

No, you!

Finally Goateed Guy cleared his throat. "He, uh, said he was gonna, uh, teach your . . uh . . your . . . fag ass a, uh, serious lesson before he lays down and lets us get a shot for the commercial. He said we'd better bring the money we promised him for taking a dive."

X gave the faintest smile and muttered, "Good."

The next morning, he and four ballerinas, Natasha and three others, were at the ballet company's offices at 11. They changed into costumes, the ballerinas into white swan outfits and their gauziest tutus, X into white tights and his blue, quilted velvet Romeo top that emphasized his wide shoulders and the taper to his small waist. They all piled into a van with the Jump City Ballet logo on the side along with one of the seamstresses, a hairstylist, the Director, Sinclair, Cooper, Lang and Goateed Guy.

The Director, Sinclair, Cooper, Lang and Goateed Guy rode up front of X and Natasha. They were all much more nervous than X. He wanted to laugh out loud. They fidgeted like they'd had 10 cups of espresso each, constantly glancing back at him. Fear was practically a visible aura around them. They reeked of it. And they didn't know what to make of X's perfect calm. He leaned back in his seat in the oversized van with a look of complete ease.

"Don't worry about being out in public in tights, Xavier," Cooper tried to reassure him. "They won't shoot from any angle that'll embarrass you."

X gave a carefree chuckle. "Why would I be embarrassed? I wear this on stage in front of 4,000 people." He leaned back and glanced at Natasha beside him rolling his eyes in exasperation at the company's execs. She was the only one who seemed to have caught on. She gave him a kiss on the cheek. And then a hug about the shoulders. "Oh, Ix,"

She knew X for months now. When X was intense but calm there was nothing to fear.

As they pulled up at the Jumpton Park courts, a series of rubberized surface basketball courts painted red and green and surrounded by chain link fence in the middle of the Jumpton housing projects, ugly, 20 story brick buildings looming over them, Lang and Goateed Guy leaned in toward X. "Don't worry," said Lang. "We can edit footage to make anyone look good."

X got up from the bench seat with a smirk. "Don't," he told them and then stepped out the door, "Let him look as bad to the world as he really was."

Lang and Goateed guy were left glancing back and forth at each other in his wake. They and the ballet's executives didn't know what to think. They were scared now that X was taking this too lightly, that their up and coming star would get stomped by the best high school basketball player Jump City had ever seen. What if everyone heard about how bad it was? Maybe their ad would be derided for being so far from the truth. Cooper and Sinclair leaned in toward Lang with desperate expressions. "Can you really do that with editing?" asked Sinclair.

For his part, X didn't pay any attention to the five of them for the next hour except for the moments when one or another of them stepped onto the court.

X stepped out of the van and onto the parking lot and surveyed the situation. The courts were surrounded, three deep, by onlookers drawn by the lighting and camera setups and crews that already surrounded half of the nearest court. The residents of the Jumpton housing projects knew that SOMEthing was being filmed that day and dozens had turned tout to find out what it was.

The seamstress fussed at X's top a few seconds but X didn't allow any more. The hairstylist gave one last sweep backward to the the front of X's short hair cut as X strode past. He was focused on the court. He immediately picked Pookie out of the crowd on the court. It wasn't hard. If he hadn't recognized him from his study of videos, he probably would have figured it from the neon yellow t-shirt he wore with "POOKIE" in black letters across the chest. If that hadn't done it, the arrogant way he carried himself and the way the other players fawned over him would have given him away.

X strode confidently to the chain link fence door entrance to the courts, through a sea of wide eyed stares at a boy in white tights in public. A boy was wearing his white ballet tights at Jumpton Park! There was a growing cascade of snickering laughter. All the boys and half the girls were guffawing and doubled over laughing at the sight of him in his full Romeo costume on the court at Jumpton Park. Though, an increasing faction of the girls stared in a completely different way. "Boy got back! Boy got serious back!" shouted one of them. X ignored all of it. He was locked in on Pookie.

X casually approached Pookie Randolph at the center of the court. By the time he got within ten feet of him, Pookie had fallen onto the court laughing at the sight of X in his dance belt, white tights, slippers and quilted blue velvet top. Like much of the next hour, events were a combination of natural action and staging.

Goateed Guy and a guy with a bullhorn and were directing things. There had been a guy with a boom mike following close behind X to get sound of him and Pookie meeting. They had X go back to the chain link door and walk toward Pookie at the center of the court again. The second time, Pookie doubled over laughing slapping his own knee. The third time he blew the take by snickering just as X got to him.

X looked him right in the eye as Pookie was still slapping one of the other players on the shoulder and making very little effort to compose himself. "Don't waste everyone's time, bitch," he told a startled Pookie loud enough for everyone to hear and turned back toward the door as Pookie belatedly took offense and started toward X shouting before being restrained by other players.

"Oh, we'll see who the bitch is! We'll see who the bitch is!"

The fourth time was the one people saw in the youtube video. X, in his tights and blue, quilted velvet top, walked up to a barely taller Pookie and didn't offer his hand but simply announced himself. "Xavier Li, Jump City Ballet."

"Pookie Randolph, AAU all american," grunted Pookie now not inclined to laugh at all.

The next half hour was taken up by shots set up by Goateed Guy and Bullhorn Man. They wanted a shot with all the ballerinas defending four of Pookie's teammates. It took a few minutes to set up and 15 takes. They couldn't get it quite to Goateed Guy and Bullhorn Man's satisfactions. They wanted the defending ballerinas and their raised defending arms to be gently swaying back and forth just so in order to have them suggest how they would look dancing Swan Lake while also being a fair approximation of how they would actually play defense in basketball.

A couple times bullhorn man gave instructions that Natasha, with her still sketchy around the edges grasp of english, didn't quite understand. X had picked up a fair amount of russian being with her and had made the effort to learn more to try and ease their communication. X stepped aside and explained to her in halting russian just what they were looking for. Natasha nodded. Oh, of course, and gave X a kiss.

X didn't have much to do in these shots. They were supposed to be from the perspective of Pookie. As Pookie looked to pass, his teammates and all these swan like defending ballerinas were to his left. X was at the edge of the shots simply facing Pookie in a slight crouch.

Pookie was giving him some seriously nasty looks now. X stared right back at him without giving an inch. During one of the many delays between takes, a basketball bounced haphazardly toward X. He picked it up delicately, looking at it like something he'd never seen before. He gave it a few intentionally awkward dribbles as though he'd never touched a ball before. Pookie's sneer melted into a feral smile. The lion spies the slowest wildebeest in the herd.

With the required shots of the ballerinas made, Bullhorn Man and Goateed Guy ordered them and the other players to the edge of the court and tossed a ball to Pookie. "Go ahead, Pookie" said Bullhorn Man, "Let's just have you against Xavier for a bit and see what footage we can get."

A buzz went through the onlookers, now four deep around the entire chain link boundary of the court and crowded onto all the overlooking balconies of the housing project apartments. There were shouted cheers for Pookie to kick his ass. At last, their Pookie, a national sensation from their own projects, would get to show what he can do!

X saw nothing else but Pookie now. Natasha, at the edge of the court, shook her head at the nervous expressions of the Director, Sinclair, Cooper, Lang and Goateed Guy. "You don't know vhat you haff," she muttered dismissively at their sweaty palms and furrowed brows.

Pookie stood in place now, dribbling the ball with an angry intensity. "How do you want me to beat you, ballet boy? How you want me to kick that ass?" barked Pookie to sycophantic oooo's from the crowd.

"I hear a lot of talk. I don't see anything yet," replied X loud enough for only Pookie to hear.

"Oh yeah?" snapped Pookie and he took off dribbling to the right side of the key leaping toward the hoop from half way to the foul line, stretching forward for his signature drive and dunk and-

SWAT!

X had stayed right with him every step of the way, jumped just as high and emphatically rejected his shot. The ball hit the chain link fence on the fly. The onlookers were stunned. Wha . . ?! This was Pookie Randolph!

Pookie.

Randolph.

The only sound at the courts was the metallic flexing of the chain link. It took a few seconds for this lonely sound to be joined by shocked muttering.

Pookie took it in stride, handling this setback with denial. He was Pookie Randolph! He went to retrieve the ball mumbling about how "ballet boy" had been lucky. He went back to center court and dribbled the ball hard but slowly again, looking at X. He started to drive toward the basket but only got one step forward as X's near side hand shot out and knocked the ball off Pookie's leg and out of bounds.

Pookie grumbled louder about how ballet boy had gotten lucky again.

Except he knocked the ball off Pookie's leg the next time he started to drive, too. And the time after that.

Pookie was angry now, slamming the ball down at the rubberized surface so that it bounced 15 feet high and barking loud expletives. X said nothing.

The fifth time, Pookie took one dribbled step then pulled up for a jump shot. X had guessed he'd try that now and easily read it every split second of the way from Pookie's weight suddenly being back this time and not leaning forward. X leaped and swatted the ball off the side of Pookie's head and off the chain link fence on one bounce.

Amidst shocked silence, Natasha could be heard laughing out loud. Even her carefree laughter somehow seemed to have a Russian accent.

"That's it, motherfucker!" shouted Pookie as he retrieved the ball. "I'm warmed up now. Now you're gonna get the real deal!"

SWAT!

SWAT!

SWAT!

SWAT!

Pookie repeatedly tried to drive to the basket against X but didn't have the speed or the jump to get past X to the hoop. He tried going left. He tried going right. He tried slowing up then charging forward again. He could not get free of X and he could not outjump X.

On the ninth try, Pookie got a shot off that was only partially blocked.

On his tenth try, Pookie tried to release a jump shot so quickly that X couldn't block it. He succeeded, but only in heaving up an air ball.

Cooper, Lang, Sinclair, the Director and Goateed Guy now wore expressions of delirious, unexpected joy as if they'd just won the lottery the day before they thought their houses were going to be foreclosed on by the bank. Pookie's confidence was shattered. He looked at X with an expression that had no feral smile remaining in it, no smile at all. There wasn't even shock any more. There was anger, befuddlement and finally grudging respect. He tossed the ball to X.

"Okay, now let's see what you can do? You gonna tell your kids how you once played some lucky D against Pookie Randolph, NBA hall of famer. They probably won't even believe you. But let's see you do something, ballet boy!"

X held the ball at center court again looking at it as if studying an object he'd never before encountered. Was this a moon rock? Perhaps a decorative orb symbolizing the power of a primitive king? He started dribbling slowly and, when Pookie reached in from one side, X spun to the other and took off driving down the key, leaping from just short of the foul line, with Pookie well behind him now, and dunking to an explosion of applause and laughter centered around the Jump City Ballet staff and ballerinas but also sprouting here and there among the other onlookers.

Pookie stood there with his jaw hanging down looking around as if hoping someone in the crowd would rescue him or at least supply an explanation, as if expecting X to pull off a mask and reveal himself as an NBA star and the whole thing as a prank.

Da.

Fuck?!

X retrieved the ball staring at Pookie as he calmly dribbled back to center court regarding him all the while with the same sort of feral smile the initially confident Pookie had sported a few minutes back. Pookie fouled him before X had even started the next time, hitting his arm with a loud slap that everyone could hear. X gave him a dismissive look. Really? But he didn't stop. He dribbled hard to his right, stopped and hit a medium range jump shot over Pookie's raised hands.

Pookie could barely compose himself now, grunting and gasping at one fresh humiliation after another. X started at mid court the next time, drove hard to the left side of the key, slowed up a moment as a desperate Pookie went lunging past him and then drove to the hoop and dunked again.

The last action was X taking the ball at center court and dribbling left, going right past Pookie and then spinning and dunking backward over his shoulder, the ball going through the net, bouncing off Pookie's face then off the chain link fence.

The crowd exploded and Bullhorn Man announced, "Okay, that's enough!"

Pookie walked off toward the other players. Sycophants just an hour ago, they now kept a distance from him as though he had suddenly contracted the same case of nothing special that had rendered them non-descript their entire playing careers. He shook his head looking back at X, a dude wearing white ballet tights and a blue velvet top had just dominated him.

Da.

Fuck?!

X walked off triumphantly to Natasha and the other ballerinas. After they'd finished hugging him, he continued on to the seamstress, hairdresser, director, Cooper, Lang, Sinclair and Goateed Guy, who was all over him. Still in the glow of triumph, they had X look into the camera while holding Natasha against his side as he stood in front of the chain link fence. "He tried, but he's just a basketball player," said a quietly confident X with just a slight smile and then a glance at beautiful Natasha, "At Jump City Ballet, sure we're athletes, but we're artists, too."

The onlookers now more than 100 strong had gone from stunned silence to shouts of encouragement to Pookie, to mild displeasure with Pookie, to snickering at him to plaudits for Xavier's athleticism. "God dammmmmmm!" shouted one, speaking for most of them. "Pookie got beat by a chinese boy from swan fuckin' lake! Da Fuck?!"

Back in the van, the staff couldn't stop congratulating smiling X. They could all see what this could do for the JCB. Not just a high culture backwater any more! One of our dancers stomped the best basketball player that Jump City ever produced. The Director and Cooper were all over Lang and Goateed Guy. How fast can you get that commercial made? When will it come out? When?!

They were told it would take at least a month to edit it, add some sound around the edges and put in some promotional graphics for JCB. Here's the number for tickets, that sort of thing. The company staff was impatient. Couldn't it be done quicker? We'll pay you more. We want the world to see our X!

Goateed Guy was adamant, though, that it had to be done right. This had to be the best ad possible. It couldn't be rushed. But, he said, they could let some clips out right away, some footage showing X stomping Pookie Randolph. He gave an elaborate description of how they would time releases of clips to youtube, faceplant and the JCB's own web site, never the same clips, always very short. But they could increase the word of mouth that would be building right now.

When they all got back to the building, everyone gave X more hugs. Last in line was the Director. "You really never played basketball before, Xavier?"

"Not before you mentioned the ad to me," said X. "It's a dumb game. I like the one with the stick and the ball the size of an apple, um, baseball? That one interests me."

The Director smiled. "Maybe we can work something out for that, too," he said and gave X a pat on the shoulder.

Word spread like wildfire through the ballet company. One of the ballerinas, the hairdresser and the seamstress had captured the action on their phones. Everyone in the building saluted X. Even the guys like Greg and Devon who were jealous of X patted his back. In an hour's time at a housing project basketball court, he had made money for all of them. He'd dramatically increased the prestige of all of them. Sure they were athletes. Now everyone would know.

After changing, X walked back to his apartment with an arm around Natasha. At the door to his apartment was a flyer for a rave night at Jump!, the biggest dance club in Jump City. Natasha looked askance. "Vhy leave zat at your apartment, Ix?"

X gave a casual shrug. "There's a guy down on the fifth floor, I think, who moonlights as a DJ. I've talked to him a few times. Nice guy. He leaves these here all the time," said X noticing that the 11 in the club's address, 11 Jump Boulevard was highlighted.

Natasha shrugged and X kissed her neck as they went through the door.


	5. In the Club

They were his favorites.

X liked Raven, too. She had no use for the superhero idolatry that the City and press pushed so hard. But Raven stayed in the Tower. Raven never went out in Jump City. X liked that they went out socially in Jump City. They weren't apart from and above regular citizens.

They were his favorites. X could see them working their way in his general direction through the crowd at the club as he sipped the last of his champagne and glanced at his watch. Park was a few minutes late already which was very annoying seeing as he'd left his bed and Natasha in it to be here. He half danced in place and waited.

The two of them were at least some diversion. Even with the thing the club was doing that night with the lights, random strobes of every hue, mostly deep purples and greens, splotches of color seeming to spin around the room such that pink hair and orange hair didn't much show up at all, even with that, it was easy to pick them out.

She never wore a mask and he didn't wear much of one. And the people in the club were swarming around them.

"Oh my god! It's Kid Flash and Jinx!", two party girls to X's right had squealed before running off toward them. As he watched, they went for Kid Flash like iron filings to a magnet. X was pretty sure one of them had put a hand to his ass from how he'd suddenly turned to that side and said something. Jinx gave her a hard stare and the girl fell backward, untouched, not even hexed but scared shitless.

X just stayed where he was next to a column, looking for Park. Their deal in places like this was to wait near the restrooms. The hallway to the restrooms was 20 feet behind him. He waited there and eventually Kid Flash and Jinx worked their way through the club and, as a defensive measure, stopped next to the same column where X was waiting. At least they could count on not being swarmed from one side.

After a minute or so, they had retreated further around the column and Kid Flash came face to face with him. They did that eye contact and a slight nod as a hello thing. But the speedster in civilian clothes stared a moment longer and then snapped his fingers.

"Hon," he tapped Jinx's shoulder. "It's the guy from the video Gar was showing us."

"Xavier Li?" asked Jinx and she craned her neck around the column to see him, giving him a nod hello. She then walked around her husband to his other side and put an around around him. "You've seen him before that," said Jinx with a sly smile.

"I have?" asked Kid Flash turning to her.

Jinx nodded. She turned to X. "Two months ago. We saw you partner Natasha Suvarov in Romeo and Juliet."

"That was him?"

X smiled and Jinx nodded with certainty. "Don't you remember? We were all very impressed by him."

Kid Flash shrugged. "Mostly Aqualad," he told X. "He's very much into ballet and opera and the symphony. He's a high culture kind of guy. He kind of got me and Jinx into the ballet. I mean interested in it. Well, I guess she always was. Anyway, he loved how you two dance together. He said you're the best, most romantic couple in all of ballet."

"Tell him 'thanks' when you see him," said X and he couldn't help but notice that, like everyone else in the club the pair of them were compulsively half dancing to the music and in perfect synch with each other.

"Sure. And you were, wow, you were really impressive in that video playing basketball against that hotshot kid."

"Wait, there are already videos out showing it? We-we just played this morning!"

Kid Flash shrugged. "All I can tell you is that Beast Boy showed us a video and it was you whupping that-that kid, um, what's his name, Mookie, Tookie, Sookie-"

"Pookie. Pookie Randolph."

"Pookie? Really?"

X nodded.

Jinx rolled her eyes and snickered, too.

X shrugged. "Hey, I didn't name him."

"You just whupped him," laughed Jinx. "And thank you," she said extending a hand.

X shook her hand, small and delicate and with perfect, albeit gray, skin. Kid Flash offered his hand, too, and X shook his as well.

"I love that all the idiots who live for sports sports sports, nothing but sports will see one of their idols get destroyed at his own game by a guy from ballet. Good!" laughed Jinx.

The random pattern of the lights in the club suddenly stopped at normal white light, with no strobing and no flashes for just a couple seconds in the middle of their conversation and X suddenly saw just how orange his hair was and how pink hers was. Her cat eyes were even more dazzling in normal light. KF had noticed X glancing up at his hair.

"Yeah, its that orange," he chuckled catching X off guard with endearing self deprecation.

The lights started flashing randomly again but with things washed, most of the time, in deep purples and greens it was now hard to distinguish the color of KF's hair from Jinx's. Around the World by Daft Punk came over the speakers and two girls came up to them and implored Kid Flash to show them how fast he could dance to it. He shrugged at Jinx and then went off to the middle of the dance floor.

She rolled her eyes and sidled up closer to X. "Most of the time we don't get that," she said. "We wouldn't come here if we did. He can't turn anybody down."

X finished his drink and waved at a passing waitress. "Champagne!" he shouted at her above the din and glanced to Jinx. How 'bout you?

She nodded.

"Two!" he shouted to the waitress holding up fingers and then turning to Jinx with a smirk. "I have a confession to make," he began. "I'm not 21."

"Neither am I," she said with a roll of her eyes. "So stupid. Some 18 year old kid is old enough to get sent to Afghanistan to protect the heroin crop for our big banks but he can't have a freaking beer!"

X caught his breath. This was his kind of high octane truth.

"That's what you think?"

She tilted her head to one side. Seriously brother? "Of course," she laughed. "How is it that we have a," she gasped as she made rabbit ear quotes, "war on drugs . . yet we take over Afghanistan and heroin production increases tenfold? How the hell does that shit happen if we're serious at all about our bullshit war on drugs?"

"I agree," said X before adding, carefully, "I'm just surprised to hear that from a superhero."

Jinx gave a big sigh. "Right and wrong are not the same as legal and illegal," she half shouted over the music and X could feel the enthusiasm rising within him. "In his Letter from a Birmingham jail, Martin Luther King, Jr. made the point that everything Hitler did was legal. I know, I know, Godwin's law. You mentioned Hitler! Haha! Well fuck that. It needs to be said. Legal does not mean right! Illegal does not mean wrong!"

"Does your husband agree with you?" asked X glancing toward the dance floor where KF was giving three steps to every beat of Around the World to the amazement of onlookers. Jinx smiled at the sight.

"Yeah, he does. You think I would marry a guy who was just pro establishment period? Anyway, the whole thing is insane. We've got poor guys who've been in prison for 20 years for selling weed and they caught that english bank, HSBC laundering hundreds of millions of dollars for drug cartels and fucking terrorist organizations, fucking terrorist organizations! And not one person at that bank even had a court summons! Not one! It's all bullshit. All of it!" (**note below)

X could barely contain himself. There was barely any more distance to get her to travel to where he was.

"I agree!" he shouted to be heard over the music. "Does it make you feel conflicted when you answer some kind of a police call and yet there's never any attention given to people like the ones who run that bank HSBC or Goldman Sachs or J.P. Morgan?"

"Yes," she quickly answered.

"Would you like to go after those people?"

"Yes," again with no hesitation.

The waitress returned with two flutes of champagne and X gave her a twenty, waving off the change. It was then that her husband returned. He strode up to his wife, gave her a kiss and wrapped one arm around her waist pulling her to his side. "So, what were you and . . . "

"Xavier!" filled in X.

"Yeah, sorry. What were you and Xavier discussing?"

"He thinks we should stop being just first responders and go after the people behind the scenes!" shouted Jinx. X watched closely. Her orange haired husband glanced furtively around before leaning in close to X.

"So do we!" he shouted to X with a glance at his wife. "The problem is how to do it!"

X shook his head. "No! How to do it is easy. You just have to go step by step. Who's running things? What have they done wrong? How should they be punished?"

It was at that moment that Park showed up. He walked up to X and tapped him on the shoulder but then froze when he saw he was talking to Jinx and . . . Kid Flash. Holy shit! Two superheroes!

"Oh, hey, Kevin," said X patting Park's shoulder. "Where's Brittney?"

Park shrugged, playing along. "She couldn't make it."

X turned to the couple. "Jinx . . Kid Flash. This is my pal Kevin Chang. Kevin. This is Jinx and Kid Flash."

Park hesitated a moment but then shook both their hands.

"Hey, it was great to meet you both," said X to the couple. "Maybe we'll I'll see you around and we'll get to talk some more. Kevin and I have to go talk some business."

X waved back at Kid Flash and Jinx and they waved at him. X led Park through the club to a particularly dark and isolated corner a hundred feet away that was almost behind a speaker yet, paradoxically more quiet than all the area they'd walked through.

"Dude, you like playing with fire too much," said Park. "You're gonna party with Kid Flash and Jinx now?!"

"Not party with 'em. I was just talking to 'em. They came over to where I was standing. Was I supposed to run away?"  
Park sighed. "No, I guess not. I just don't like the idea of hanging around with the only people you don't have an edge over. That's all."

"Well, we had a very interesting talk which you either stopped at the perfect moment or I want to kill you for walking up right then. I'm not sure."

"What? You're gonna bring them over to your side?" chuckled Park.

X looked him right in the eyes. "They want to hurt the people who can't be hurt, too."

"What?!"

X nodded. Park ran his hand through his hair and stared off at a corner of the ceiling. He stood there several moments trying to digest this.

"So . . . what're you gonna do?"

"I'm not sure," said X, "But options might be opening up." He left it at that. There was a pause of several seconds before they could go on to other matters.

"So . . . all that gold. Where is it?" asked Park.

X smiled. "It's in a bread truck in a Jump City Police vehicle impound lot."

Park punched X's shoulder. "Holy shit! Are you addicted to playing too cute with everything?"

"Where could I leave it, Park? I couldn't bring it up to my apartment. Should I have left the truck in my apartment complex's parking lot? I couldn't leave it on the street. If I leave it out there somewhere else I'd be afraid that it'd get stolen. I've got a working JCPD name and uniform and I used that to bring it to the impound lot. Nobody can steal it from there. It's perfectly safe. It's just . . sort of in cop possession right now."

"What about the bank? Any news of a robbery?"

X shook his head. "Nothing, which could either mean that they haven't discovered it or they're not going to report it. If it's the latter, that could mean, shocker, that something illegal was going on there and they can't report it."

Park sighed. That made sense. And no public report meant the police weren't involved in tracking anyone down.

"Good. How much was there, again?"

"There were one hundred sixty 400 ounce bars," grinned X. He watched Park working through the math but didn't wait. "Four thousand, three hundred and eighty nine pounds and change. $76,800,000 at present exchange rates. Maybe 50 times that if everyone's economy goes down the fucking toilet and everyone wants gold."

"Holy shit!" Park laughed and gave X a hug about the shoulders. "Great job man. So you had to move more than 10 times as much as we thought there'd be."

X nodded. "It was a big hassle. But after we give the billionaire his two hundred pounds there's still two thousand pounds for each of us. On top of that, there was about a million and a half in dollars, euros and yuan, too. Some bearer bonds, too."

Park gave a joyous shout. "Fuck, man! What were those assholes at J.P. Sachs doing? They don't give our guy his two hundred pounds of gold when they've got twenty times that much sitting in the vault?"

"They're sociopath crooks," said X. "They probably needed it to send to someone else they've been cheating for longer than they've been cheating our guy."

"Now they're really fucked!" laughed Park. "God, I hope some Chinese bank or Korean bank has their nuts in a vise over this. Couldn't happen to a more deserving bunch."

X grinned agreement. "Now, how do you want to move your half? The fake engine thing won't work for 2,000 pounds of gold. It was only going to be good for 200."

Park shrugged. "Well, then why don't we send 10 or 11 fake engines? There's no reason there can't be more than 1."

X considered this for a moment. He was right. It was so simple. There was no reason they couldn't just rig up 10 or 11 of them instead of one and send Park's gold to Taipei that way.

"So, you'll have another 10 fakes sent over?"

Park nodded. "In three or four days."

"But, wait," said X. "Couldn't you take it on your private jet?"

Park shook his head with an expression of distaste. "My pilot's not in on anything. I don't want to involve him. This is high level stuff. Let me make the arrangements. In about four days, a couple of the guys you already know will arrive in Jump City and we'll have a warehouse set up for getting the engines packed."

"Okay."

"What about your share? What're you going to do?"

"I think I'll have the Titans watch over it," said X.

"Oh, shit," laughed Park with a shake of his head. "I don't want to know what crazy plan you've got in mind."

X and Park hugged and patted each other's back.

"And, one last thing," said Park as they separated. "Brittney? Seriously? You've got me dating a girl named 'Brittney'? Tell me so I can get my story straight. Did I meet her at tryouts for American Idol or did we both attend the same taping of Dancing with the Stars? What the fuck, X?"

X laughed. "Hey, speaking of girls, I've gotta go because I have one of the most beautiful and most flexible women in the world waiting for me in bed."

"Asshole!" laughed Park as they got a few steps apart before shouting, "Hey, great job taking care of that Pookie kid!"

X only laughed.

**TT**TT**TT**TT**TT**

**Author's note: This is true. It's shocking and depressing and you might not want to face the facts of how corrupt and unfair things are but it's true. And there's no way they'll get any better unless enough people face them. Do a search for the term "HSBC laundering drug money" and you'll get multiple explanations of it. So if some poor black, white or hispanic kid gets caught dealing a few hundred dollars of cannabis he might go to jail for a long time. If some banker at HSBC or the other "too big to fail" banks facilitates billions of dollars of trade in hard drugs through money laundering he gets . . nothing! He probably gets a bonus for all the huge profits he helped the bank make. This is the American "justice" system today.

And, yeah, heroin production in Afghanistan is estimated to have increased tenfold since the U.S. with its supposed "war on drugs" took over the country.


	6. Thinking back to Pop

X shifted underneath Natasha to a position that was more comfortable for his shoulder. Tasha loved cuddling and spooning or sleeping half on top of him like this. X had once joked that this was because it was so cold in Archangel, Russia, where she was from that it was a necessity for survival. She didn't disagree.

He didn't mind. Right now he was enjoying that relative sense of your own body that you got from your lover. With Tasha, X felt like he had shoulders like Superman because hers were so delicate. She was pretty far from pear shaped but her hips were wider than his. He felt like his hips were 6 inches wide underneath her. And she had a hand even smaller than Jinx's that he'd shook earlier that night. She would sometimes hold him as she slept and it made him feel enormous.

Right now she was giving that last couple of sighs. He shook his head. Tasha was like a cat, a couple of quick sighs and then completely, contentedly asleep. X glanced down at her head resting on his chest wondering if she could sense the excitement of his thoughts, because he was excited. He was very excited. Maybe if she could sense anything she'd think it was the same excitement as the hours before. X glanced at the clock on the table beside his bed. 3:17. He should go to sleep, too.

But he was ecstatic.

Jinx and Kid Flash had realized it too! They knew it too! Two of the Titans!

They were all playing around the edges while the worst people in the world got away with murder, hell many murders. Millions of murders.

X gently rubbed Tasha's back. He had to protect her. He had to protect . . everyone. It was so big, so impossibly all encompassing. And Pop had been onto it.

"I'm gonna finish what you started, Pop," whispered X to the ceiling, the sky and beyond. He drifted off to sleep thinking, wistfully, of his years growing up and of his father.

Skinny Xavier Li grew up as the adored only child of Xiu and Xuezhi Li. Xavier idolized his father Xuezhi. His father had some kind of job where he was sometimes gone for days at a time. At night, when his father was away, little Xavier would huddle beside his mother all night, reading and working on whichever puzzle had him fixated now.

He wasn't scared. He didn't think that a monster would get him. Things just didn't feel right without his father. Being next to his mother was the closest that he could come to it feeling right. His mother seemed to like it, too. She missed Pop when he was away.

When he came back from these absences, it was like the whole world, or at least everything around the Li apartment, was a flower blooming in spring after a harsh winter. Xavier knew the sound of his father's athletic, springy step in the apartment building hallway and before his father even got near their apartment he would jump up from whatever he was doing with joyous shouts of "Pop! Pop!" and throw himself against his father as soon as he was through the door.

His father seemed to know everything and be able to do everything and even when it wasn't true, his father had something that Xavier didn't see in other men, a calm confidence. His father was taller than average, just over 6 feet tall, but it wasn't that. And he was more athletic than any of the other fathers, easily more than those of his friends Hao and Yong and those of all the other boys. But he wasn't the biggest father or probably the strongest. He was extremely athletic but also slender. The other fathers had their merits but it was only having Xuezhi Li around that made everything alright.

Once, for new year in early February, a group of five families had gone out to dinner something that never happened, so Xavier remembered it clearly. And while they were waiting outside the restaurant to be seated there was the sound of gunshots.

Gunshots in Singapore!

And there were wails of sirens and the sound of car tires squealing as someone drove around a corner too fast.

All the other fathers shrank back with their wives against the side of the restaurant's facade. Pop jogged out into traffic to see what it was and then ran two blocks down the street at an impressive clip. Without thinking, Xavier ran down the sidewalk after his father. He didn't even hear his mother behind him shouting for both of them to stop and come back. He remembered a feeling of adventure and he remembered standing on that street corner beside his father, looking up at Pop scanning the area, hypervigilant, ready for anything and then turning and seeing him and smiling. "Xavier? What are you doing here?"

"I . . . I wanted help you, Pop."

Afterward he remembered that his father never scolded him for this. His mother reproached him for doing something dangerous. But X hadn't felt any danger, only adventure. But she wasn't too upset and he noticed that the other parents all seemed to admire Pop for not giving in to fear. X could never imagine Pop giving in to fear. Inside, one of the other fathers also remarked about how fast both the Li's ran. Hao told everyone that X was the fastest boy in class. Everyone just calls him "X" explained Hao. He was even faster than any of the boys in the class above them, including the British and Dutch boys, too. Even that African boy, said Hao. Yong nodded. It was true.

X felt a bit conflicted. He was proud of being the fastest but Grandpa Li had been training him since 5 years old and Grandpa Li said you weren't supposed to boast. Maybe it made it okay because someone else said it, especially with Grandpa Li not there to hear it.

Grandpa Chen and Grandma Chen lived off Admiralty Road at the north end of the island and even though it was only 12 miles away, X saw them much less often than Grandpa and Grandma Li who were within walking distance of Sims Avenue. They lived in an immaculate, small house set among a row of similar houses not very far from a very rich neighborhood.

X had great affection for both Grandpa and Grandma Li. Grandpa Li trained him. When he started, he told him that he was going to give him the same training he'd given his father. X had beamed. What could be better? In the basement of the small house there was a gymnastics mat and a heavy bag. It looked like it had been beat on by a world heavyweight champion. The leather was scuffed and cracked and it had lost shape. But Grandpa Li infused that tired heavy bag with all the evils of the world and commanded little X to strike it again and again, to spin and kick it and to fly through the air to kick it.

"This time it's a man attacking your mother . . . It's a thief who's broken into your home . . . It's an older boy attacking your friend Hao!"

He wished that all his training consisted of striking the evils in the heavy bag but it was only a small part of it. He spent more time doing things that seemed silly like trying to do a pushup with one finger,trying to breathe in certain ways and jumping straight up in the air over and over again starting with his feet in odd positions. And then there was the stretching. The stretching! Grandpa Li insisted that he stretch before anything else and that he be able to kick straight up and do full splits on the mat. He also spent much of the time giving X what he called "spirit and character" training.

As much as X would have wanted to spend all his time attacking the bag, he realized that, like Pop, Grandpa Li understood the proper balance of things. Grandma Li was the same way. Once she was over at the apartment and Hao's and Yong's mothers were telling X's mom that it was odd how fixated X got with his books and his puzzles. They didn't think he'd heard them half whispering in the kitchen from the Go! board on the living room floor but he had. They wondered if it was healthy.

Grandma Li spoke up and said it was the best thing for him. "A girl who is beautiful right from the start has no hope," she said. And then she paused. X was used to this. Grandma Li would pause half way through her aphorisms to see if you could guess the rest. "A handsome boy can immerse himself in other things," she finished. The mothers all nodded.

X was vaguely aware that he was considered an extra handsome boy. He wasn't unfamiliar with the concept. He could tell that one girl was pretty and another one less so and maybe a third one not at all. He just didn't care. He didn't care about the pats on the head that he would get or the way grownups would smile looking at him. He didn't care. He couldn't wait for it to be over so he could go back to his books or his puzzles or training or tagging along with Pop.

School was a challenge for Xavier at first. It wasn't that it was difficult. It was incredibly easy. He couldn't believe the easy Mandarin and English questions that other kids had trouble with, the simple math problems that perplexed them. No, the difficulty was in sitting still and listening to his teachers. He couldn't help comparing them to Pop and Grandpa Li and Mom and Grandma Li. It was not a comparison that was kind to his teachers. If they weren't constantly telling him how smart he was and that he had gotten the best grade in the class he would have found it unbearable. He excelled at school but it was an uneasy truce between his spirit and the school's demands for obedience.

Sometimes when he wanted to stand up and shout at the pointless demands for obedience he drew solace just looking down at his white dress shirt or his black pants. His first day at Eunos Primary School he wore black pants and a white, long sleeve shirt. This was what his father most always wore to work, though X wasn't sure exactly where his father worked. But Pop wore black pants and a white, long sleeve shirt with the sleeves rolled up. So, that's what X would wear.

The school administration was upset. No! You can't wear that! We have a school uniform! You were told about it! Everyone has to wear that! You have to wear that!

X had seen the school uniform. Dopy creased or pleated blue shorts and a cheap white short sleeve shirt with a blue collar and blue piping. Ugh. It made anyone who wore it look like a little baby and an idiot. No way. No way.

They called his mother in. They said they wouldn't let Xavier in the school again the next day if he wasn't wearing the official school uniform. X was with his mother in the hallway outside the principal's office. "Please, Mom! I want to wear what Pop wears!" he pleaded. "You saw that uniform!" he whispered.

She made a funny face of distaste in sympathy then gave him a long look of thorough calculation. "Okay, Xavier but don't say anything unless I tell you to".

They were called in and sat down in chairs set noticeably lower than the one in which the principal sat. X took an immediate dislike to him. There was no other way to say it. He looked stupid. He had a stupid air about him. He was bald with thick glasses and kept making dumb facial expressions. He couldn't be a wise man making faces like that. He looked like that gas station attendant, at the one on Geylang Road, who always wanted to talk to his father and whom his father kept politely fending off.

The man went on a rambling rant about how Eunos had to promote certain values and school uniforms were part of that. He made it sound like Singapore would all slide into the Singapore Strait if everyone didn't wear the same clothes. It didn't make much sense. His mother said that she understood but pleaded poverty. X looked at her in shock.

This was a lie.

Mom told a lie for me!

The principal disputed that she couldn't pay for it. He said that the shorts and shirts weren't that much, really. His mom said they were overpriced. And she said she'd already bought Xavier multiple sets of black pants and white shirts, which was another lie.

X stared at his mom. Wow!

Then the principal totally blew it. He showed how totally out of touch he was. A few kids had made fun of X for not wearing the school uniform. The principal had apparently seen one incident of it and now went into an incoherent spiel about how Xavier would find that trying to stand outside of the society of students, or some such crap, would be too much for him.

You make a good point, said Mrs. Li. Another lie! X knew she didn't think so. She had made that face she always made when somebody was saying something she knew was crap but she couldn't say it right then. Her mouth curled at one side and her neck got tense. She made that face. But then she was saying the principal had a point. Suddenly, she produced a pen and paper from her purse and quickly wrote on the back of it.

X watched her. It was a couple lines long to the effect that he, the principal, agreed that X could wear black pants and a white short instead of the school uniform until the pressure of not conforming was too much for him and then he would have to wear the standard school uniform and write a 2,000 word essay about how important it was to fit in with others. She put the paper on the desk and the principal smiled.

And then he signed it! He signed it!

X almost burst into laughter. Mrs. Li asked him to date it, too, and write his name in block letters beneath the signature. This will be a good lesson, said Mrs. Li as the principal complied and then she had him make two copies of it. He kept one and she gave the other to X.

"Two thousand words!" the man said to X. Yes, X nodded, doing his best to adopt a resigned expression in front of this man. Then Mrs. Li and X got up. She quickly thanked the principal and they made their way out trying not to snicker while still within earshot.

To the exasperation of the Eunos staff, X never once wore the school uniform and whenever questioned on it would produce a copy of the principal's signature giving him permission. It was particularly vexing to them at school functions. There would be all these boys and girls wearing their official school uniforms and they would give out the prize for the highest honors in his class and it would go to a boy wearing something completely different.

X remembered telling his father of how his mother had gotten him permission to wear what he wanted. He remembered the extra smile on his father's face when he told him that he wanted to wear the same things he did. That extra smile stayed with X.

Everything was going so well. It didn't seem that this could change. Pop was gone on another one of his work trips. X wished he didn't have to but he was 8 years old now, not just some little kid. He still sat with his mother some of the time when his father was away. He was sitting beside her on the couch when that call came.

All the color drained from her face and her expression froze but her eyes showed great pain. X had put his book down and couldn't hear much of what was said. He only caught four words, ". . . your husband is missing . . "

And with those four words, everything changed.

X walked through life like a zombie for the next month. It took a herculean effort on his part to focus in school. His pals, Hao and Yong, who had been helped so many times by X on so many assignments, now stepped forward and bailed X out several times. He wanted to cry so often. But his mother was crying. He couldn't, at least not in front of her.

His mother was shattered. It took her months to get back to a semblance of her normal self even with all the visits from Grandpa Li and Grandma Li and Grandpa Chen and Grandma Chen. He would come home from school and hear her crying and then hear her trying to compose herself, to allow one last sob, one last sniffle and wipe her eyes before he came into the room. He'd walk in to find her wiping her cheek and trying to hide it as part of some other gesture. At other times, inspired by nothing happening at the moment, she would grab him and hug him with all her might for a few seconds or a minute or more.

X sensed that he had to be strong. He couldn't give in to the feelings of desolation that sometimes washed over him. If his mother knew how bad he felt, she would feel even worse. He couldn't let that happen. He wasn't sure what she'd do if she knew how bad he really felt. She almost made him want to cry just seeing how bad she felt already. So, he was strong. His mother was free to feel everything that she felt about his father and work through it at her own pace. It would be better that way. X allowed himself several good cries alone in his room, always making sure to get there, out of his mother's sight before tears flowed.

Hao and Yong saw him cry once. It was a month after that call. There was no reason for it. They came over to do homework with X, as usual. He'd known they were coming but had forgotten about it. It had been one of those times when he was overwhelmed by how much he missed his father. He wasn't even sure what had inspired it. These moods could hit him for the weirdest reasons, the sight of something he associated with his father, someone saying a combination of words that his father often used, the smell of after shave like his father used, anything.

Hao and Yong entered his room to find X sitting sideways on his bed with his math book in front of him but not looking at it and tears streaming down his cheeks. They both knew. They didn't have to ask why X was crying. They quietly closed the door behind them and approached him without saying a word.

He suddenly noticed them. "I was just thinking about my dad," X whispered without looking up.

Hao and Yong both nodded and quietly pulled chairs up to the edge of the bed the way they always did and pulled out their math books, every movement in perfect silence. Hao reached over and patted X's shoulder without saying a word. Yong reached forward and did the same. X wasn't sure how much longer he had cried, maybe a minute, maybe more. But his pals just sat there ready to wait as long as X needed. They didn't say a word.

He gestured with one hand to take in the whole room, to take in everything. "Sometimes it's really bad and I can't . . . " he sighed, barely under control.

Hao reached forward and gave X another pat on the shoulder. Yong followed suit. A few minutes later he gave a long controlled sigh. He wiped his eyes and then looked at his pals giving them the slightest nod. They started work on the math homework and never said a word about it. When they left, they each gave X another pat on the shoulder.

After another month, X stopped being overcome by sadness. Much of what replaced depression was anger. Most of all, X recoiled from the stupid fraudulence of school. The truce between his spirit and obedience was over and the troops of his spirit had just sacked the capital of obedience and demanded unconditional surrender.

The teachers all noticed. The looks he gave them! Such scorn. He was officially polite but beneath the protocol of raising his hand and standing at attention was a roiling desire to show how pathetic the lessons were that the school taught. Just be good and things will be okay? Really? Obey authority? Really?

Stories of fights reached the staff now. There was nothing that could be done about it. They always seemed to occur off school grounds but the Li boy developed a fearsome reputation as a fighter. The staff would have found a way to punish him anyway but as far as they could tell he had only fought to protect other kids, once his friend Hao from two boys a year older than them and another time a girl who lived in the same apartment building as him. These hadn't been just run of the mill schoolboy fights. He had given those other boys fierce beatings.

But, as much as X was heading in one general direction, what made that path certain was the evening at the Geylang station house.

Lieutenant Ling had only been doing his job. Nobody liked being the one to break this sort of news of a change of status to presumed dead but it was his job on this case. He was a veteran of 20 years at the station house in the Geylang district, not a slum but the home of the red light district and the crappiest section of Singapore. This sort of thing never went well, telling a presumed widow that she was never going to see her husband again without explicitly saying so.

The trick, Ling knew, was to make the sort of official statements hold out some hope, we'll continue looking for him, that sort of thing. But at the right time you let her know that it just wasn't going to happen. You'd told her the truth but you'd also given her that slim reed of official hope.

And the pretty widow had played her part. She sobbed quietly, intermittently wiping tears. This Mrs. Li was barely able to talk but was saying the right things. If it had been just the widow it would have been okay. The whole thing was screwy, anyway. Ling could barely figure out what the guy's official status had been. This was the problem with files by undercover guys. They didn't put everything on paper. He was some kind of undercover status that Ling hadn't even heard of. Minister level? What the hell was that? Ling wasn't sure. Nor could he figure who was the target of the investigation. The file didn't make sense. Rothschild?! Seriously?

If it had been just the widow it would have been unpleasant but these things were always unpleasant. But it wasn't just the widow. There was the boy. And the boy was impossible. After a little while he wondered if the two weren't pulling a good cop-bad cop routine on him. The widow was nice but the boy was relentless. He'd say something to the widow just to be nice and the boy would jump on the tiniest loose end of it.

He'd be on the verge of smacking the skinny kid when the widow would ask another question and he'd respond and then the boy would run wild with some part of that, too. Ling couldn't understand how this had gotten so out of control. These things went 15 minutes, tops, sometimes less. He'd studied the file for a full hour before the widow arrived. He was completely prepared. He should have been able to finesse it to a close quickly.

And he would have if it was only her. She hadn't said anything about bringing their 8 year old son but it was obvious, from the moment he came through the door, that the handsome boy scowling at him was Xuezhi Li's son.

The kid made him say everything. Everything. Made him go over everything. He wouldn't leave anything unsaid and assumed. He kept this up for 90 minutes. Yes, we contacted other ships that were in the area where the container ship was found adrift! Of course we checked to see if a life boat was missing! Ling would never have been so accommodating if it wasn't a case where he was informing the wife of a sort of cop that her husband wasn't coming back.

But still! This boy!

Ling had had enough now. The boy was questioning whether they'd adequately searched the giant container ship for his father.

"You think we didn't try to confirm that, kid?! There were 17 dead guys on that container ship when it was found adrift. 17! But there was no sign of your father. Those guys had wives and kids, too! What about them, huh? Your father probably killed all of them. Did you think of that? Do you have any idea what your father's reputation was? Any?! There were guys who . . . !" Ling caught himself. Not in front of the widow.

He turned back to the kid. "He . . . !" Ling shook his head remembering the gory pictures. "They weren't even sure whose intestines were whose on that ship! There were fucking eyeballs everywhere! Eyeballs . . ! There was fucking blood everywhere! You wanna see the photos?"

"Yes!"

Ling grunted an expletive and face palmed. He'd had no intention of showing the boy the photos. He'd flinched at the sight of them, himself, and he'd seen a lot of dead bodies in his time. "Okay," he said with rising anger. "Okay!" and he pushed the skinny kid into the chair at the opposite desk and opened the file to the worst one, then pushed hard at the back of his neck pressing the little fucker's face down into the worst one, the one where the black guy had his skull cracked wide open and an eyeball dangling and the english guy on the floor next to him had all his guts spilling out of him and his eye had burst. "There!" he shouted. "Is that what you want?!"

He'd expected the boy to recoil. But after one furious glance back at him the boy just sat there and calmly flipped through all 47 photos, a complete gorefest enough to gag a coroner. Ling shook his head. Oh, this was Xuezhi Li's kid alright. He had no idea what the boy was thinking. He read the whole file, inspected every photo and then started asking more questions. More!

Ling groaned and conspicuously glanced at his watch in front of the kid. Two hours! Two fucking hours when nothing could be changed, anyway. It didn't matter. The boy read every single line of the file.

Ling was furious by this point. He was way beyond being nice to this fucking kid.

"So, who was the target of the investigation? This . . Rothschild?" asked the boy pointing to a page in the open file.

Ling swooped in and grabbed the file and slammed it closed and brought it back to his desk shoving it in a drawer. Now the boy was angry. The boy leaned over him. "Who was the target of the investigation?" the boy shouted.

Ling was incredulous and shouted back. "I'm not sure. It couldn't be what it looks like. I-I don't know!"

"Why couldn't it be what it looks like?"

"Because, kid!" Ling roared, "There are people we can't get to and all of us know it! There are people who you have to work to even realize that they exist behind it all and if you do, then you realize that these people can't be hurt! Not by me, not by the whole Singapore Police Department!"

"Then, you're a coward and so are all the rest of them!" shouted the boy waving one arm to take in all the rest of the building.

Ling jumped up from his desk and grabbed the boy. He was going to throw his little ass through the doorway and into the desk at the far end of the adjacent room, throw him as hard as he could. And he was gonna enjoy it. He grabbed the boy's collar and then, somehow, he found himself on the floor and the boy's knee on his chest. Wha-?! It was all so fast. The boy twisted. Ling felt his knee collapse. The boy had his wrist. And there Ling was, on his back, looking up in shock at the kid's angry face. What the-?! It was all so fast. The boy-the boy couldn't be that good.

"You slipped," grunted the boy through bared teeth pulling a cocked fist back down to his side. He pressed his knee down on a stunned Ling's chest for a second before standing up and taking a step back. Ling looked around, embarrassed and surprised. Did anyone see that, he wondered as he staggered to his feet.

"Get-get out," he mumbled. The boy went back to the other room, intermittently casting contemptuous looks back at Ling. He helped his mother to her feet and held her hand as they walked slowly to the door.

"You did good Xavier," she whispered out in the hall.

"So, they can't be hurt, huh?" he muttered.


	7. A new purpose for Xavier Li

You don't become a super thief overnight. And that wasn't how eight year old Xavier Li intended to hurt the people who were so powerful they supposedly couldn't be hurt. The truth was that skinny Xavier had no idea how he would get back at these Rothschilds and their allies. He certainly didn't have plans of becoming a super thief.

He had never stolen anything before his father went missing, not a piece of candy, not another kid's pencil, nothing. Not one thing. So claiming that Red X was born to be a super thief is lying. He didn't have any apparent destiny as a thief, never mind a super thief. He wanted to get these Rothschilds. He wasn't sure how he would do it but he didn't immediately jump to the idea of being a thief.

For one thing, little Xavier had adopted his father's quiet but intense sort of pride in everything about his family. The idea of being desperately covetous of something someone else owned was inconceivable to him. Sure other people had things that he and Pop and his mom didn't but so what? His regard for his father was so great that any jewels or money or possession that his father hadn't sought was at least slightly illegitimate in his eyes.

You have a 10 carat diamond? So what? You have a five million dollar mansion? So what?

X's father never seemed to care about these things. He had his beautiful wife and adoring son. Few and modest possessions were fine. X followed his lead. But when his father went missing and was then officially presumed dead the whole world and its order was called into question in Xavier's eyes. The top was ripped off the machine of the whole system and X saw corrupt people living impossibly rich lives while leaving just enough for others to get by. What had his father gotten for his honor and living modestly?

Death.

Betrayal, X suspected, and death.

Now 9 years old, skinny Xavier burned with resentment just looking for a target. His precarious obedience at school, sitting there and listening to fool teachers all day long was only possible because of the order given to the world and acceptance of the system imparted by his father. His father had told him to be a good boy and not get in any trouble at school. He would complain about something at school and Pop would put a hand on X's shoulder and give him an understanding look and X would feel all the tension of the stupidity of a school day go away. Pop understood. Even though Pop never varied from his instructions to X to be a good boy and not get in any trouble, knowing and actually feeling in Pop's pat of his shoulder that Pop understood made it all okay. His father justified the whole system to X. But now the system had let his father die or at least didn't seem to have any great interest in searching for him or figuring out what had happened to him. And there was nothing that would ever justify it again. X regarded the whole system as a bitter fraud.

The part of the system with which he came into contact was Eunos Primary School and his teachers. He saw them all quite differently now. Before they had all been a bit tiresome, and not especially worthy of his respect. Now, he regarded them with undisguised scorn. In conversations in the staff room they remarked about the furious looks the strikingly handsome Li boy now gave them. They knew he was having a rough time, having lost his father but still. Why become so hostile?

He'd been, not quite a favorite of the teachers before but such a strikingly handsome boy and such an intelligent one, he wasn't far from it. Now they came to dread seeing the Li boy. But as unfriendly as he was toward them, the Li boy didn't act out directly against them. There had been an American boy in the class ahead of him, who had done that, who had simply refused to sit down when told or be quiet or fold his hands on his desk. There had been a brief and swift two week period of his getting progressively greater punishments, even when the obedience demanded had no practical value, and then he was expelled and that was it.

No. That would be foolish. Xavier Li was not going to invite punishment. He was going to show them to be the fools they were, them and their fake system. So, it began that, in every class, Xavier would sit at his desk just like all the other boys and girls but with a fierce expression of focus. At the slightest mistake, his hand would shoot up.

"Yes, Xavier?"

"Teacher, that formula is wrong. It should be X squared."

"Teacher, the article in that sentence should be 'this' and not 'these' because it refers back to a singular and not a plural."

"Teacher, that happened after the battle of Leipzig in 1813 and not after Waterloo in 1815."

Every error they made was caught by Xavier Li. It got to be an expected thing. A teacher would hear girls snicker with delight and turn with a cringe toward Xavier Li with his hand raised. Damn! What did he catch now?

He was their implacable enemy. What was even more infuriating than his showing their every error to all the other students was that he would also question every moral or ethical teaching they included in any study of a piece of literature or history. He was always careful to do so within the strictures of classroom protocol, raising his hand and standing to speak when called upon but he would then put forth the most bitterly cynical interpretations or alternative views of every maxim they were trying to teach the class.

"Teacher, isn't there an alternative, colloquial version of that he who has the gold makes the rules?"

"Teacher, couldn't one also argue that, in a Sentimental Education, Flaubert is mocking religious piety not saluting it?"

They would have loved to give the Li boy an F in a class, on a paper, on a quiz. Oh, sweet heaven, that would have been a spoonful of ambrosia for one of them to get to flunk Xavier Li. Just giving him a D would have been joy. A C deeply satisfying.

They never even got to give his work a B. He was always the best prepared student in the class. He always turned in his assignments on time. He always knew the answer. At the end of each school year they had a ceremony, attended by most of the parents, giving awards to the top 3 students in each class. Every year, Xavier Li won it in his class. They had to give the highest award to _that_ boy and watch him walk up to accept it to tremendous applause from the other students attending.

The teachers found themselves in the bizarre circumstance of hating that this boy had learned everything he was supposed to learn. But that's where he had forced them to be. There was no way to do anything to him. But he was there, day after day, sniping at them from cover. And he achieved a sort of bad boy popularity that infuriated the teachers. They hated Xavier Li, with one exception. The Physical Education teachers loved him. They would show the boys how to serve a tennis ball or swim freestyle or run hurdles and they knew to have Xavier Li be the first boy to try it. X would watch the PE teacher do it then step forward and casually hit a perfect serve or swim the freestyle with bilateral breathing or run the hurdles without so much as touching one hurdle. The other boys would be befuddled but the fact that X could do it right away let each Phys. Ed teacher believe that it was the other boys' fault not a lack of teaching on his part. After all, he hadn't taught the Li boy any more than he'd taught them.

So, there was one set of teachers who liked X while all the others wished to be rid of him. They would even barter with each other to avoid dealing with him.

"I had him in my english class last semester! Not again! Take him in yours, Mrs. Wong. Please! I'll watch your study hall for you. Please?!"

This was not California. This was Singapore. You didn't flout the system. If you flouted the system you got your ass caned. But this boy somehow seemed to get himself outside of the system when he wanted to be. The teachers could never figure out how this infuriating boy and his mother had gotten the principal to sign a note saying that he could wear his own clothes rather than the school uniform setting him apart from all the other children. He sat there every day in his white dress shirt and black pants attacking them, attacking the school in ways that they couldn't punish and the other children loved it.

He walked through the halls with his friends Hao and Yong beside him greeted by smiles and admiring glances from all the other students. With each passing year at Eunos Primary School the antipathy he had for the staff and that they felt for him became more and more open.

As much as the teachers hated it, all of this made school more bearable for Xavier. He could not have gone on showing respect to these fools, these people happy to be thoughtless cogs in an unjust system. But this was only a small part of what he knew he must do. Starting the night that he and his mother came home from the Geylang precinct station and the talk with Lieutenant Ling, there was one name that was a target for his revenge, that was always somewhere in his thoughts.

Rothschild.

The moment he and his mother stepped in the apartment after dealing with Lieutenant Ling at the Geylang station house, X immediately spent three hours writing down everything he could remember from having seen the file. He might never get to see it again. He had a photographic memory and put it to use. He even made stick figure sketches of all the photographs with brief labels of them such as "Photo 37 - sailor with greek flag on shirt impaled on exposed re-bar and missing left eye" and "Photo 41 - english man in khakis and white shirt with two missing eyeballs and knife into chest bled out on floor of ship's bridge". He wasn't sure he'd ever get to see that file again so he had to make the best record he could. He wiped tears from his cheeks in the darkness afterward when he finally lay down to go to sleep. "I'll get 'em, Pop. I'll get 'em," he whispered.

But the file had been frustratingly incomplete. The first question X had to answer was just whom he would get. Who was this David Rothschild? What did he do? And why was he the target of Pop's investigation? X began an extended program to learn all that he could about this name, about this family. This extra study was helped by the fact that X simply didn't require much sleep. Five hours was always plenty. And four hours was often enough. His mother had some inkling of what he was doing. She'd peek into his room just before going to bed, be it at midnight or 1 a.m. or whenever and almost invariably find Xavier at the computer looking at some writer's hypothesis about the Rothschilds or wide awake atop his bed reading some 100 year old book with yellowed pages and a split binding about wealthy dynastic families of that time. She would say a quiet goodnight and add "Be sensible, Xavier" but she never tried to stop him. His fixation never detracted from his school work and he seemed healthier every day. He kept up his training with Grandpa Li who told her "You should see your reed of a boy Xiu. He's fast and he's much stronger than you might think." One day when he was 11, curious about all the percussive sounds from downstairs. She went down to the basement at her in laws' home as Grandpa Li was training Xavier and was astounded at how her slender son flew through the air and rocked the heavy bag with kicks. Yah! There was no doubt that her beautiful, skinny boy could defeat many, if not most, full grown men. He was so fantastically toned, her little boy, not muscular, but not an ounce of fat on him. Not an ounce. She worried that he was being overworked by Grandpa Li. Or, maybe he wasn't eating enough. But he would wolf down prodigious amounts of food for a boy so slender and keep that same pace of training and practically have a glow of good health about him. She accepted the training.

It came to seem completely natural to X. In fact, thinking back on his childhood before this he realized that he had bounced from one fascination to another always looking for the next thing on which to fixate but needing that thing. He needed a cause, a fixation, what some people would have called a mania. X needed it. He had so much energy. He needed something on which to focus all of it. It wasn't a heightened, exhausting state of things for X. It was natural.

And, because she never tried to curtail his extracurricular studies or activities, Xavier knew he had his mother's implicit backing. And what he found amazed him. Reading everything possible from the internet and old used books he found that the Rothschild family had been universally acknowledged as the richest in the world in the mid 1800's, the richest by far. They controlled european banking with the dominant bank in the capital of every major country. The Rothschilds were so powerful that the matriarch of the family said that if her sons didn't want any particular war to happen then it wouldn't. This was no idle hyperbole. Countries and kings had to come, hat in hand, to the Rothschilds asking for financing, so powerful were they. If they didn't want a country to fight another country they didn't finance its side of the war and that was all there was to it.

But then, over a period of many years, they didn't become poorer. There were no stories of all their gold being stolen or that they had invested all their wealth in some project that didn't come to fruition. No quite the opposite was almost certainly the case. They almost certainly became much, much richer. But somehow they became invisible.

What had happened burst into Xavier's thoughts while over at Yong's apartment watching the american movie, The Usual Suspects. There was a line in it where, almost giving it all away, the non-descript little guy who turned out to be the most vicious killer says, "The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world that he didn't exist."

Xavier's eyes went wide and me muttered "Yes!". Yong and Hao had given him funny looks but just turned back to the movie. That was the trick the Rothschilds had pulled. Some time in the late 1800's they must have realized that they would be a target if everyone continued to know about them and see what they were doing.

There was a previous example of what could happen to someone in such a seemingly powerful position. Back in the 1300's the Knights Templar were an organization so financially powerful that the King of France came to owe them more money than he could pay back. He came up with a solution. He had them arrested and killed.

So the Rothschilds just . . disappeared. They still existed. But there were always intermediaries bribing parliaments and congresses, buying up whole industries. You could still see the family patriarch in the news every couple years or so in some innocuous announcement about the Rothschilds pulling out of the London gold fix or being in some minor partnership. But there were no stories at all about their wealth. None. Because, if you had more money than anyone in the world, more money than some nations, so much money that you could buy presidents and prime ministers, parliaments and congresses at least as much of them as you needed to buy, if you could do that and get whatever you wanted, you wouldn't want to be seen and acknowledged and have everyone rightly hating you every day and wishing your downfall.

So, how did the devil convince the world that he didn't exist? What was the trick? After months of research late at night, Xavier came to the conclusion that, if you were cleverly sinister, you would hide behind holding companies and shell corporations, trusts and partnerships multiple layers deep. You would hide behind banks. It wasn't the Rothschilds behind the Opium Wars in China. It was the British bank HSBC. The Rothschilds controlled it behind a series of trusts and holding corporations but it was HSBC that was evil.

Some old books said that it was the Rothschilds who'd bought off politicians to create the Federal Reserve in the United States. Banker J.P. Morgan was considered the richest man in the United States at that time and strongly rumored to be behind it but there were books that said he was only a clerk for the Rothschilds. He was only their agent. They directed his actions no less than you might a waiter in a restaurant or a bellhop in a hotel and let fools think that this ugly little Morgan had conceived a great fortune out of nowhere and was deploying it to suit his own predilections. They let this Morgan be the object of hatred while they derived all the benefits from how this clerk of theirs moved their money about the country.

This was clever, thought Xavier, in a macchiavellian sort of way. How else would the Devil disappear? He would buy the press, too, and make sure they didn't say anything about him or anything at all that he didn't want said, wouldn't he? It was easier than a person might think. Many articles talked about how, in the United States, only 6 corporations owned almost all the media. Control them and you control whether or not many people ever hear your name. If anyone else brings up your name you have all your bought and paid for media call that guy a kook, a wingnut, a conspiracy theorist.

The only place you could see or hear the name Rothschild was on the internet. The internet was where Xavier heard about a study by two Swiss professors which showed that a single entity, a single cluster of interlocked corporations and trusts seems to own at least 40% of all international corporations on the planet. And who do you think seemed to be at the center of all those interlocking corporations and trusts?

These were the things that Xavier spent his spare time thinking about in the year or two after his father was officially presumed dead. While other boys and girls in Singapore were concerning themselves with the pop culture phenomenon of the moment, Xavier Li was wondering how to free the world from the domination of this crime syndicate.

They were not just unimaginably rich, these Rothschilds, they owned the big american, british and swiss banks that controlled the international drug trade. They owned the companies at the center of the American military industrial complex. When the american military invaded another country and sorrow came to the families of the residents of that country and sorrow came to the families of the soldiers doing the fighting there were only the joyous sounds of the ringing of cash registers at companies like Brown and Root and Haliburton all owned, through intermediaries, by the Rothschilds.

Was it really such a surprise then that the politician owning side of the Rothschilds' economic colossus seemed to be used to blunder into pointless conflicts that enriched the military industrial complex side of the same organization?

At the same time as X was trying to grasp the enormity of the Rothschilds' empire he was also trying to figure out the details of his father's file. It was like a puzzle with only a handful of a hundred pieces visible. What evidence had his father been chasing after. Why was he on that freighter? What did a few innocuous words in the file mean? What was going on? Why had they felt they had to kill his father? Why had they had 17 guys on that freighter to fight Pop? And what were they trying to stop him from exposing? What had the Rothschilds been up to in Singapore?

X would go over loose words written in the margins of the file and a single name, "Senie" thinking about them over and over and over until it hurt, until he had to rub his temples to soothe himself. And then he would go for a walk. He would take off from the apartment he and his mother shared on Sims Avenue and go in all directions.

Just 88 miles north of the equator, Singapore was steamy hot year round. Until dark, it wasn't realistic to walk any distance in Singapore. X would go for a walk at midnight and, with his springy steps, walk 5 miles or more. He might go west across the Kallang River into downtown, south to the coast, east to the golf courses or north to Sengkang. Most of the island was within his reach and he did this night after night. He became familiar with every street and side street, every building of any sort within miles of where he and his mother lived on Sims Avenue. He developed an encyclopedic knowledge of the streets and terrain of the entire City.

X saw everything and noticed everything. He saw the women outside the houses and apartment building entrances of certain notorious addresses in Geylang. It contained the red light district of Singapore. He never quite knew what to think about these women. Grandpa and Grandma on his mother's side had only caustic things to say about these certain blocks within Geylang. They said it was one reason why they wouldn't live in this part of the island. But mostly X felt kind of sorry for them. He kind of liked them. A couple of them would smile and wave to him as he strode briskly past. They wondered what the hell this pretty boy was doing night after night walking by at a near run. He smiled and waved back.

He had to do something. He couldn't just get to another dead end trying to solve the puzzle that Pop must have at least partly solved and have that energy go nowhere. So he walked and walked and he became much more familiar with his city, with Singapore. It was on one of these walks that he saw what became the basis of his first crime. Of course, X wouldn't have regarded it as a crime at all. From whom was anything stolen? Not from any rightful owner of anything. It would have been impossible to figure out just who was a rightful owner of it, if there had ever been one.

There was no crime, maybe technically at most. In fact, it was quite just. So, he didn't have any sort of crisis of conscience that he had to get past. No tension. No hesitation. He was stealing but it wasn't a crime. There's a difference.

It began after 1 a.m. on a dark night with clouds and no moon and X was northwest of home, at the end of Kallang Way where it came to an intersection with much larger Aljunied Road. He was in the leafy shadows next to the entrance for the Kallang Centre when an unmarked white Hyundai Avante, the same make and model as most of the Singapore police cars, came whipping around the corner with a frantic looking man at the wheel. X recognized the driver instantly. He would know that hated face anywhere.

Ling!

It was Lieutenant Ling! Only not in a police uniform, wearing dirty work clothes, with a full day's growth of beard and looking absolutely frantic, borderline paranoid. He hadn't seen X standing behind a tree and a brick wall but had been scanning nervously all around him as he drove.

X didn't hesitate. He ran after him. That look on his face! X just knew that this terrible man had done something wrong. He didn't know what but he had to find out. He had to! Ten year old X ran as hard as he could. He ran his fastest without letup till his leg muscles burned and his lungs were on fire. He wasn't quite sure what he would do if he caught up to him. He should just observe him but giving his all physically, his thoughts naturally ran a bit to punching him. Oh, how sweet it would be, to run up and punch that coward Ling!

X ran faster than he'd ever run before but still Ling was in a car. Ten year old X was just reaching Genting Lane when he saw Ling's car in the distance take the sharp 90 degree bend of Kallang Way as it turned to the north. Ten year old X ran for all he was worth, but when he got to the corner and bent over in exhaustion, he didn't see anything. At 1 a.m., there were no cars heading north on Kallang at that moment and X felt sure that the car hadn't turned off in the other direction. He would have heard the tires squeal again if Ling had made another fast turn.

X felt angry frustration. Ling had done something wrong! Ling had done something wrong! X was certain of it. Certain! That frantic look on his face wasn't the kind you had when you were searching for someone else the way a cop might look for a crook. It was the look of someone who'd done something wrong and wondered if others were watching him. Did anyone see me?!

X sighed and walked back to the end of Kallang then down Aljunied to Sims all the while trying to imagine what was really going on. It pained him but he couldn't figure it out. He didn't come close to guessing, not until lunch time the next day. Then he knew.

After lunch, X was in the library sitting with his pals Hao and Yong at one of the tables furthest from the entrance. He was skimming that day's copy of The Straits Times, the biggest newspaper in Singapore, when he saw the write up of an arrest. There had been a robbery of a bullion storage facility on Chai Chee Lane. The article said that the cops had caught all the guys but one and had recovered 100 of 150 bars of platinum. The article said they were confident that they'd recover the rest of them. The bars weighed one hundred troy ounces each. With the price of platinum at a little over 1,400 Singapore dollars an ounce that meant each of the bars was worth 140,000 Singapore dollars.

X's eyes went wide. He slapped the table and let out a half shouted "Yes!".

Eyes around the library went to him. The librarian gave him a stare with her index finger crossing her lips. Shhhh!

X nodded and went over the article again, now laughing at the idea that they'd recover the missing platinum bars. No they wouldn't! He threw his head back and laughed out loud. Yong looked at him like he was nuts.

X knew they'd never find those bars. Not officially, anyway! And he knew why not. And now he knew why he lost sight of Ling's car, too! Ling hadn't gone around the corner. He'd turned into the self storage facility right before the bend of the road. Ling had the rest of the stolen platinum! Ling had it! X was sure of it. Ling had moved it to the self storage place.

He told Hao and Yong about it. They questioned him a bit but believed him. Yong shook his head. "You and your crazy late night walks."

"This is the guy!" whispered X enthusiastically to his buddies while glancing to make sure no teachers were nearby and no one was listening to them. "This is the guy I told you about! The guy who talked to me and my mom! The guy who told us to our faces that the cops wouldn't go after certain people. To our fucking faces!" He finished in a growl of a whisper, grabbing Hao's shoulder hard.

"Ow. Are you sure you're not just putting it all on this guy because you hate him so much?" asked Hao.

"That's not it, man. Look . . . "

X went over it all again. The article in the paper. Ling's appearance. Where he went.

"So . . what do you want to do?" asked Yong, fearfully.

X snickered at the obviousness of it. "We're gonna take the bullion from Ling."

Yong sighed with a slow shake of his head. "Dude. Teachers already tell me I shouldn't hang out with you. Did you know that?" he said and then adopted a stereotypical uncool teacher's voice, "Mr. Guo why do you associate with that Li boy. He's trouble," he said before going back to his normal voice. "Trouble, X. Do you have any idea how fucking crazy you have to be to be the kid with the best grades in class and for the teachers to say you're trouble? And here you are . . . !"

Hao looked X in the eyes and nodded. "I'm in."

X grinned and looked at Yong who sighed in defeat. "Fine, I'm in, too, then," said Yong, "But in what?"

"Look," whispered X more softly. "That platinum supposedly belonged to JP Morgan and I've told you what complete fucking crooks those guys are. They've been caught being crooks in every single market where they operate."

Yong rolled his eyes. X and his 'thieves robbing the whole world' rant again.

"-well, that bunch of crooks got robbed by some acknowledged crooks who got robbed by Ling and maybe some other cops, who're a bunch of corrupt bums. So we're three levels deep in crooks here, right? Is it still thievery when you steal from a thief? How 'bout when you steal from a thief who stole from thieves who stole from thieves? When you can't even trace the goods back to an honest owner? I say no. And it's even less when you're stealing from a thief who stole from thieves who stole from thieves. There's no original, innocent party here."

Hao nodded his agreement with this. He and X looked at Yong. Yong nodded.

"He's got it at the StorHub self storage place on the bend of Kallang Way, the yellow and brick building."

"So, how do we get it?" asked Hao, intrigued.

X leaned in and outlined his plan to his pals. "I . . think I know how. But I've got to got there right after school. See me at my room tonight. If I'm right, here's what we'll do . . ."

X went through it all. At the end of it, several layers of operation, Yong tilted his head to the side looking at X. "You just thought that up now?"

X nodded. "It's obvious."

The first step was after school that day. X waved bye to Hao and Yong and ran, with his books under his arm from Eunos Primary school to the shaded side of Kallang Way. Even thought it was still the heat of day in steamy Singapore, he ran. He had to get there right away. He slowed to a walk a block away and with a couple paper towels he wiped the sweat off his face and walked calmly into the entrance of the StorHub facility and marched straight to the caretaker's office and stepped inside where he was met by a blast of cold, air conditioning.

A bored, fat man behind the counter glanced up once then went back to staring at his phone. X furiously scanned the interior. On the wall facing the man were two screens showing live security camera footage. X quickly realized that the two cameras must be positioned at the two back corners of the property. On the counter in front of the fat man was a clipboard with several sheets of paper. There were times listed in the left most column then a number in the next column then a name taking up each line on the sheet from there to the right end of the sheet. Yes!

X grabbed a pen and started to write the time on the sheet while committing to memory everything on it.

"Hey, that's only for unit owners," the fat man limply objected. "Do you own?"

"Oh," chirped X. "I didn't realize. I was just signing in because I'm visiting," said X while signing "Lee Chin".

"That ain't how it works, kid," said the fat man reluctantly rousing himself from his chair and waddling over to the counter opposite slender X. "That sheet's for owners to check in when they visit. We keep records. Only owners go in and potential customers I wave in. You visit, you sign in. That way if anything happens, we got a record of who was here."

X nodded. "Well, my . . my mom and dad are . . divorcing." He dropped his eyes. "My mom and I are going to live in a smaller apartment and we need some space for some of our stuff. My mom sent me to scout for a place."

"Movin' to a real rabbit hutch, huh kid?"

X gave an ashamed nod. "What are the options for size of units and what are the monthly and yearly costs of them?"

The man recited sizes and prices of units in a tone that betrayed unenthusiastic memorization and complete disinterest in whether or not the boy and his mother signed up.

X asked for a brochure and the fat man pointed to a display on the counter. X then asked if he could take a look around the property.

The man sighed. "It's fucking hot out there, kid. Just . . . just take a walk, out that door," he pointed to a second door on the same side of the office as where X had entered only on the other side of the gate that blocked cars from going in or out. "You got five minutes or I call the cops on you and I'll have 'em cane your skinny ass."

X nodded. He palmed the pen off the counter and took it outside with him, immediately writing on the brochure in the stifling heat.

Sept. 19 1:17 a.m. Chen Wing Yan. Unit 237.

X walked briskly around the place noting the position of two cameras, fences, the gate and unit 237. This would be the one where Ling had the platinum bars. Today was the 29th and it had been about a quarter after 1 when Ling had screeched around the corner from Aljunied. The sign in before that had been just after 9 p.m on the 28th. The one after that just before 7 a.m. on the 29th. So, that had to be the one. But it didn't say "Ling".

This only perplexed X for a moment. Of course not. Was he gonna keep stolen goods in his real name? He's a cop. He can get fake ID. Especially if he's bent.

X didn't stop in front of unit 237. He walked past it casually noting the type of lock on its roll up metal door. Yes! He exulted. He knew he could beat that one. He smiled as he spun part way around to take in that whole part of the facility that included unit 237. He went back to the office and put the pen back on the counter, apologizing for having it. The fat guy just grunted. Yeah, whatever.

X left the property and walked around the block twice, looking at every property that abutted the storage place, the fences, an alley, the driveways and every possible means of approach or escape. He committed it all to memory in great detail.

That night after dinner, Hao and Yong showed up at X's apartment. Mrs. Li thought of it as just another visit of X's pals. She let them in with the usual smile. Xavier's friends were so adorable, Hao with his big ears and Yong with his little pot belly. She patted both their heads as usual when they walked by.

They filtered in through the apartment to X's room laden with books as usual. But this time was different. As soon as they closed the door, X waved them over to where he sat on his bed with a map spread out. He was calm but intense, focused and quietly certain of what he was telling them. Though Hao and, especially, Yong were uncertain about this, X won them over and after ten minutes they found themselves believing as well, that they, three 10 year olds, would take stolen bullion from a police lieutenant. It seemed so reasonable the way X explained it. Why not?

The very next evening was part 1 of the plan. There were two stationary cameras filming the site, each covering the other and most of the property. Their coverage overlapped and together they were constantly filming the entire site. They were located at the two back corners of the property and both were just inside a stockade wood fence topped by a series of points or spikes.

At 10:59, X sat with his back against the fence, his feet technically on the abutting property, his back on the self storage property. He listened closely. He heard a distant ship's horn in the harbor. There was the indistinct thrum of traffic on still busy streets a few blocks away. And then there was the sound of skateboard wheels on a sidewalk and two boys shouting and laughing. The sound came closer and then there was more shouting between the boys.

X grabbed the top of the six foot fence with one hand, jumped and in one smooth motion pulled himself up atop the fence so that he had one foot on the fence running across the back line of the property to the other corner and one foot atop the fence that ran to the front of the property. He leaned over, deftly keeping his balance, and with Yong's camera, took a picture from just a centimeter above the camera at that corner of the property. Then, just as smoothly as he was up, he was down. Out of the corner of his eye he thought he saw Yong looking at him and made a note to reproach Yong for not being completely invested in playing his role of idiot skater boy.

X ran across the stacked construction materials and debris in the storage yard that was the lot behind the self storage place. As he did, he was listening for Hao and Yong. There were a couple bits of skateboard sound but not much nor much yelling. But, at 11:05, just as planned, he heard Hao and Yong's skateboards and then the two of them laughing and yelling anew out in front of the self storage place. That was his cue. As before, X jumped atop the six foot fence, straddling the security camera and then taking a picture with Yong's camera from just barely above the security camera. He jumped down and ran out to Kallang Way. From a shadowed area across the street he yelled to Hao and Yong who by now were being yelled at by the fat guy from the office doorway. "Go do that somewhere else you little losers!"

"Yeah, have another doughnut, fatty!" shouted Hao as he and Yong skateboarded across Kallang Way to the shadows where X was. All three ran a ways down toward Aljunied and then Hao turned to X. "Got the pictures?"

X nodded.

The next part of the plan was preparation and had three parts. The first was to have pictures made and mount them on thick card stock then create something with which to attach them to the cameras. X had those two pictures enlarged to 11 by 17 then mounted. He glued the middle of a wire coat hanger to the back of both and extended the ends so that they could be wrapped around the cameras.

Then X took a pair of scissors and cut an aluminum soda can in half. He took one half, cut a vertical slit one half inch long and then cut around the circumference of the can so that he had a ribbon of aluminum one half inch wide.

The last part was to figure out transportation. If everything went right, X would have 50 platinum bars each weighing 100 ounces, a total of 350 pounds or so. But the solution was obvious. They'd already used it. Skateboards. They just needed to work out a few details in that and where they'd keep the bars. X had a meeting with Hao and Yong where they went over everything.

Then they went over it again.

Then they went over it again.

Hao and, especially, Yong were exasperated with X's demands to fine tune and critique and fine tune again every part of what they were going to do. For his part, X found the sense of a mission galvanizing. It made him appreciate even more how stupidly pointless most of the school day was. Why couldn't school be run so that he could be alive in the moment like this in school?! He squinted a moment thinking of school with white hot anger before going back to their preparations.

"Tomorrow", he told his pals as they were getting ready to leave.

"Really, miyou?" asked Hao. X nodded.

Yong took a deep inhale. "Think about it. We're 10 years old and tomorrow we'll . . " X patted his shoulder. He didn't want Yong getting nervous about it. He was more confident about Hao.

"Don't let him get scared!" he whispered into one of Hao's big ears as he slipped out of X's room behind Yong.

The job went so easy that Yong never go nervous at all. It all went just as X had planned. Hao and Yong made just enough noise out front to get the fat caretaker's attention. X attached the pictures to each camera so that the tv's in the office would show nothing but the same harmless picture. Then, X actually ran across the top of the fence. It impressed the hell out of Hao and Yong. He slid the strip of aluminum into the lock and pulled it free in just a couple seconds. It only took X a minute to find the bars inside unit 237 and another minute later they were flying over the fence to the adjacent property were Hao and Yong had set up a discarded mattress so that most of the bars landed on it. Then X locked the unit back up and jumped the fence to stand right beside Hao and Yong. He worked back to each of the cameras, removing the still pictures and joined his pals in divvying up the bars.

An hour later, there they were on the short cliff at the coast just west of the beach south of Geylang. They'd skateboarded there from the self storage facility. They'd stayed in the shadows so that no nice guy cops drove up to them and asked what they were doing and did they need a ride home. They had the bars in the pockets of the construction worker vests they wore under their clothes. Part way there, Yong and to a lesser degree Hao had balked at all the weight they were carrying. Even though they just had to stand up straight. The pitch of the roads was all downhill toward the coast; it was still a lot of weight. X sighed and took a couple of each of their bars. Finally, they got to the coast. They counted the bars.

Fifty.

All three giggled thinking of how much money it was. X reiterated their pact. Not a word of any of this on pain of death. He put his hand out. Yong and Hao put theirs over his. They vowed again.

X brought out the black mesh bags. He had five similar black mesh bags. He put in all the bars but one and then put that full bag in the second and that in the third etc. It didn't leave much shiny platinum visible. But X had swum off this cliff and he knew about all the rocks armoring the coast here. He pulled off all his clothes then threw the bag into the water just off the shore and jumped as far beyond that as he could.

Hao and Yong threw their light sticks into the water and this definitely helped. X had burst into the water fifteen feet out from the shore. The bag with the bars had gone in about five feet off the shore. X found it and wedged it into a gap between some boulders. Then he put a much smaller rock over it. Lastly, he looked for the zebra rock. He had to pick up a couple light sticks to find it. There was a small boulder with distinctive black and white stripes that X had seen before. With some difficulty he rolled the zebra rock along the water's edge till it marked where the bars were. Then he climbed up the cliff to where Hao and Yong were and put his clothes back on.

As they started to roll away from there, Yong had muttered, "I can't believe we got away with it. Seven million!"

Hao glanced at the bar in X's hand and gave a carefree laugh.

X only smirked.


	8. The Acrobat

X followed the papers and internet stories closely after he and his pals, Hao and Yong, had taken the platinum bars. Not surprisingly, there were never any stories of the robbery. How could there be? Was Ling going to file a report that what he'd stolen had been stolen from him? X just had to check.

He could only guess when Lieutenant Ling realized that his stolen goods had been taken from him. X dearly wanted to see Ling, to just show up outside the station and smirk at him, nothing more, just smirk at him. But he knew that he couldn't do anything to let the corrupt cop know who'd taken the bars. He certainly wouldn't suspect some 10 year old boys.

The satisfaction of having done that to him made the thought of corrupt Lieutenant Ling a lot easier for X to handle. His thoughts were mostly of two things now, how to deal with the bars, and the next job.

The former was very frustrating. X came to the sudden realization that there was no easy explanation for how he, a ten year old, should suddenly be in possession of a 100 ounce platinum bar worth 140,000 Singapore dollars. And how the hell would he casually work into the conversation with a jeweler or banker that, oh yeah, he had another 49 of them? He realized he was stuck. He, Hao and Yong had bars worth a total of 7 million Singapore dollars but they couldn't get any money for them, not any way that X could figure out. He puzzled over this as his principle focus for a while but then his thoughts turned to another job. It came to him one day as he, Hao and Yong were walking home from school. It was a sight he'd seen several times before but never paid any attention to it. Now he watched. He counted.

Of course!

He had a serene feeling of confidence about it. He just knew he'd do it. He told Hao and Yong about it. They were both certain that it was hopeless.

"Dude!" said Yong with a shake of his head. "A pretty boy like you ought to be more worried about going to prison. They'll be lined up out the prison door to use your ass!"

Hao was almost equally skeptical. "He's right, man. It's too crazy. One little deviation and it won't work."

But X wouldn't be deterred. He just . . knew. He just knew it would happen. He knew his pals would think he was crazy so he didn't tell them that. "I just need to fashion the right tool," he told his pals. "You'll see."

A week later, they came to his room to go over homework, as usual, and he showed it to them. A thin metal cable with a thin rubber coated electric wire running down it and a 'C' shaped clamp at the end. He showed them how it worked, the clamp closing quickly and quiet when he triggered it. And it could carry serious weight. It did precisely what it was made to do. Hao's attitude softened a bit. He was at least open to the idea of this job. Yong was still scared.

"Dude. You can be . . . anything," he pleaded. "Seriously, X, anything. Why risk going to prison?"

X was totally committed to the job now. He rolled his eyes. "They'd send me to juvie, not prison. And I'm not going there, either. Why are you so down on this? I counted it out while they moved the bags didn't I?"

Yong sighed and nodded. As they walked home that day X had made them cross the street and stop. He'd counted out loud so that Hao and Yong could hear him. Yong fidgeted. He knew was going to give in. He couldn't stand up to X. And X had counted it out. It could work. He'd seen the guards doing just what X said they would.

The way the boys walked home went past a JP Morgan Chase branch office. Every Thursday, there was an armored car. And Yong had never really noticed it but when X pointed it out he had to agree. The guards moved the bags in and out exactly the same way. They stacked them on the end of the truck and then, with one guy always looking outward at any bystanders, at the 180 degrees, left center and right, behind the truck the other guy would pile the bags onto a hand cart that they would roll into the bank. They always did it the same way. Every bag, the guy loading up the hand cart would take and put in place and there would be five seconds. X had counted them out over and over again as he, Hao and Yong watched from a half block away.

"One . . two . . three . . four . . five, placed in the hand cart and a turn back to the truck."

Over and over again.

X's idea was so simple it was brilliant. And he had the escape all worked out.

Finally, Yong shrugged and nodded. "Fine. I'm in." Though, he admitted to X afterward that he still felt a little bit of ambivalence. What would be next?!

But it was hard to put up too much negative attitude when he and Hao arrived at X and his mother's apartment and X pulled the two bags, not just one as he'd planned on but two, two bags full of money from under his bed and dumped the contents onto the blanket. All three boys laughed and cheered as all the blocks of bundled hundred Singapore dollar bills and also a couple of bundles of hundred euro bills and Chinese Yuan cascaded down onto X's bed. Hao took his shirt off and rubbed each bundle across his nipples in his best guess of a girl indulging in cash foreplay.

Yong stood up and took one handful of bundled cash and simulated having sex with it against his crotch. "Oh Singies! Oh Singies! You knoooooow your Yong man is gonna treat you right he'll give you . . unh and . . unh and . . unh and . . unh!"

X stopped him before he got to cash climax and started inspecting the bills for any marks. Then he counted. While he did that he had Hao and Yong burn the two money bags. Didn't need to have those ever found here.

The whole thing had been ridiculously easy. X had worked his way onto the roof of the building next to the bank dressed in different clothes and wearing sunglasses and a baseball cap pulled down tight over his eyes. As the truck pulled up he leaped from the building to a street tree and from there onto the roof of the truck, all of it so smoothly, and, with slender X's light weight, so quietly that the guards had no idea that anyone was on top of the truck. Hao and Yong started an argument in front of the guards, not too extreme, not a fight but just enough to be noticed and to distract. They both did such a good job of it and kept to their parts, never looking toward the truck, that they weren't even sure X had been successful until a minute later when they had passed by the truck and heard the two guards arguing.

" . . twelve bags but there are supposed to be fourteen!"

"Are you sure you took 'em out?"

"Yeah I'm sure, there are only 10 left inside. What the . . ?!"

The news that night said that there had been a daring daylight robbery of an armored car. They said that 1.2 million Singapore dollars had been stolen. So, it was with some surprise that X finished the count and showed Hao and Yong his notes. They had a take of just over 700,000 Singapore dollars, just shy of 100,000 euros and another 100,000 Chinese Yuan. X quickly calculated the exchange rate value of the other currency. It worked out to about 900,000 Singapore dollars total value.

"One point two!?" spat X. "Fucking JP Morgan!"

"They lie and rob other people and they even lie about how they're robbed!" laughed an incredulous Hao.

The three pals got a good chuckle out of it and it made it even easier to feel okay about robbing them. They were lying in their insurance report. An outfit like that stole at every turn and lied at every turn. X didn't feel the slightest remorse at liberating some currency from a thieving bank owned by the Rothschilds like that.

It would have been dangerous to have flashed a lot of money after that job. X and the guys were pretty restrained. They allotted themselves a thousand Singapore dollars each for 90 days and bought nothing but what boys their age might have been expected to buy.

The police weren't looking for boys anyway. The papers and tv news showed a couple photos from security cameras of X leaping from the truck back onto a nearby roof. The papers said they were looking for an extremely athletic thief, possibly an acrobat, five seven to five eleven and wearing size 11 shoes. X wasn't that tall and his ploy of wearing oversized shoes that he'd stuffed the toes of had paid off. The cops claimed to have a shoe print from the top of the truck and so they knew that the thief wore size 10. X wore shoes a few sizes smaller than that.

So the guys had some walking around money but they were still in a quandary about what to do with the platinum bars and the quandary was only growing because X had his next job in mind and it was going to present the same problem. He used some of his money to take his mother to the Singapore Art Museum. His mother loved that sort of thing so he was happy to take her. He didn't think much of many of the paintings and sculptures but his mother would linger in front of some of them so he bit his tongue and stayed as long as she wished.

Near the end of their visit, they came to be standing in front of a painting that had a plaque under it saying that it had been donated to the exhibition by Yuo Chee. X caught his breath. Yuo Chee was the billionaire chairman of the eastern hemisphere division of HSBC. Hong Kong Shanghai Bank Corporation, the bank that had financed he Opium Wars. X had explained them to Hao and Yong a few weeks before. At first they were sure he was just making it up out of anti-British sentiment. But it was true.

Over a period of decades Chinese companies had not desired any British goods except silver in return for their tea or jade or other goods. British companies and the British government were angry about this state of affairs by the late 1800's. The Chinese had massive amounts of silver, a metal still recognized around the world as money, and the British couldn't get any of it back. So, they forced opium into China and demanded to be paid in silver for it.

The Chinese government and people were incensed about this. They fought two wars to try to force the British and their explicit pushing of opium out of their country but lost. Hao and Yong didn't believe it until X made them read multiple historical accounts of it. England, the country not some secretive gang or cartel but the country of England dealt drugs to Chinese as official government policy to get back silver.

Motherfucker!

HSBC was one of the banks that X especially wanted to go after. He saw a red jacketed museum tour guide out of the corner of his eye.

"Excuse me? Sir? This painting here belongs to Mr. Chee. Is that right?"

The man walked over and nodded pointing to the plaque. "He's allowing it to be shown to the end of this exhibition tomorrow. Then it goes back to his collection."

"Where is that?" X asked.

"Up in his penthouse."

"It's too bad other people can't see it more often. It's quite impressive."

"We're lucky he lets us see it as much as he does," said the guide starting to turn away.

X nodded.

It took surprisingly little research for X to find out exactly where Mr. Chee lived. He wasn't in the phone book but he and his wife had let the press and photographers into their huge penthouse apartment and shown off their room of paintings. The articles were replete with fawning commentary and pictures. In one picture, X could see the top of the distinctively sail shaped luxury high rise on Orchard Street in the background over Mr. Chee's shoulder. That meant that Chee must live at the top of a particular one just to the west of it.

X walked to that building that night. Like most residential towers in Singapore its outside was characterized by balconies on every floor. X looked up. Forty seven stories.

Okay, that was a lot.

But still. It was just the same climb from floor to floor 47 times. If he could do it once . . .

He couldn't resist. X barely suppressed a grin as he walked around the building sort of sizing it up, gliding across the parking lot and over the lawn between the laboriously kept up topiary. He stopped at one side of the building in a shadowy landscaped area away from the road and then discreetly inspected the place. The first couple floors of apartments or condos were dark. X leaped and grabbed onto the edge of the second floor balcony. He lifted himself up, stood on the railing of that balcony. It was only six feet from that railing to the bottom of the next balcony. Skinny X barely had to jump at all to get a hold of the bottom of the railing on the balcony of each successive floor. He could make those jumps all day long. He was up to the tenth floor, more than 100 feet up, before he satisfied himself that he could climb the whole thing and climbed back down.

X didn't have to tell Hao and Yong. He was going to do the job alone. But they were his pals. He told them. As usual, Hao was easier to convince it would work than was Yong.

X waited months before doing it. He was almost 12 by the time the timing was right. He wanted to be as sure as he could be that Mr. Chee would not be home. X did as much research as he could on the guy. That fawning magazine article had included a couple pictures of the huge penthouse apartment including one with a room of paintings in the background and another that showed a main hallway. X found old real estate ads for the usual layout of the floors of that building. He figured that it might be a little different on the top floor but it would have to be at least similar, what with elevators and utility conduits and the like being the same on all floors.

And he watched for notices about Mr. Chee attending high society events, the first night of the symphony season, an opera, ballet or charity gala. He had lists, in his head only, nothing on paper or electronically traceable, lists of the events that Mr. Chee seemed to always attend. And just short of his 12th birthday, one of those events was coming up, the first night of the symphony's next season. Mr. Chee regularly gave to them and showed up at the opening night and got his ass kissed for donating money that was a rounding error for bank accounts the size of his.

With cash, X bought a black plastic cannister that he slung over his shoulder. It was three feet long and one end unscrewed. He would put the paintings in there. He bought a small folding knife, with cash, the sort that one might use to cut paintings away from ornate frames.

He carefully shopped for the right clothes, a loose pair of dark running pants, a thin, dark long sleeve top, a pair of sneakers meant for rock climbers and very thin, almost rubbery gloves meant for kayaking. Lastly, he bought a very thin, black ski mask and a dark pair of glasses.

He waited for the symphony's opening night. The program indicated an 8 p.m. starting time. From his position in the bushes of the next building, X saw a long black limousine, such as previous recon told him Chee always took, leave Mr. Chee's building at 7. It would be gone till at least 10:30 or maybe 11. X waited a few more minutes then made his move.

He walked calmly across half lit lawn and sprinted through shadows to the base of the building. The climb was even easier than X had remembered it being. Of course, he was a couple inches taller than he'd been when he'd first tried it and definitely stronger after dozens more training sessions with Grandpa Li. He didn't look down behind him, only up toward his target.

He only had a couple tricky moments in the climb. There was a party at one of the units in the upper 20's, 28 or 29. He could hear music from a couple stories below. When he pulled himself up to look he saw a couple different women's calves, feet and high heeled shoes just a meter away. But he didn't panic. Even when a couple guys came over to join them, X stayed calm and focused. He was looking for a pattern or something he could predict. When would they go away or, at least, turn away. He could hang there a long time waiting, if need by. The railing, like all the others on the balconies of that building, consisted of alternating thick and thin black painted steel posts. X pulled himself up tight against one of the thick ones, his head turned sideways and cheek resting against it. It helped, too, that the background behind X in that direction was also dark, a deserted parking garage.

So, he waited. Finally, the girls were convinced by something the guys had whispered to them. The four of them were barely turned toward the glass doors back into the apartment when X had lifted himself up onto that balcony then jumped onto the railing and again up to the next level. One of the girls had turned around just a few seconds after reaching the glass doors but X was out of sight on the next balcony already.

Finally he got to the penthouse level. From the level below he had stretched up and craned his neck to be able to see over the balcony with one eye. Nothing. There was no one there and only dim lighting from the penthouse apartment interior modulated the darkness at all.

X bound up over the railing of the penthouse level feeling any fatigue from the nearly 50 story climb evaporating with the excitement of nearly being in. From behind his dark glasses and his ski mask he scanned the interior of the apartment. There wasn't anyone in sight. Next to the french doors entering out onto the patio were he stood was a huge kitchen area.

X moved silently to the door and scanned high and low along the wall inside. There! Down low. Just as he'd read on line. Alarms on doors like these tended to have those little rectangular boxes just a couple centimeters long, less then a centimeter thick, where the alarm circuit went into the wall. So, the detector was down low.

X jammed the end of a magnetized pin into the door jamb and the french door, lifting it slowly till he felt extra resistance. He got another one out of his pocket and attached the half meter long wire to both pins. The circuit would now still continue even if he opened the door.

He stood up and cracked it open just far enough to squeeze his skinny self inside. He paused a moment listening intently for any sound of an alarm, not a loud ear splitting clang throughout the penthouse condo but a small, barely audible beep that might accompany a red light suddenly going on at a control panel in another room.

Nothing. He heard nothing. He moved through the kitchen, the black cylinder still slung over his shoulder, silently reaching the hallway when he heard a sound. Then another sound. A belch. And then a fart. And somehow he knew that these sounds were emanating from a very big and fat man.

He felt adrenaline coursing through him. He was now up on the front of his feet, ready to leap. This was it. He saw a light on in a room down the hall and, as he got closer, could hear the sounds of a tv quietly tuned to one of the Singapore stations.

He turned the corner with one eye just far enough to see him. Sitting in a chair, turned sideways to the door, in a dark suit, was a vending machine sized guard. X drew back. He calculated.

Then he stepped out into the middle of the hallway and shouted at the huge private thug. "Hey, Fatty!"

The guard's eyes went wide as his neck snapped around toward X. "What the fuck?!" he grunted as he laboriously got his bulk out of the chair and started toward X. "I don't know how-"

He never finished the statement as now that his chin was properly exposed, X took one running step toward him, leaped and smashed his heel right into Fatty's jaw. The man went down in a heap, pushing the chair back and upending a table and lamp with his tumbling bulk. X hogtied him with the plastic ties he'd brought in his pockets and gagged him with his own tie.

The painting, and four others that X also too, was in the next room, a sort of study with an expensive desk and rosewood bookcases. One after another he pulled the paintings off the wall, cut them out of their frames then rolled them up together and slid them into the black cannister. He slung it over his shoulder and left. The climb down was almost anticlimactic. He didn't even have to pause on any balconies. Minutes later he was jumping down onto the perfect lawn beside the building then running to a darkened area beside a tree and turning all his clothes inside out so that he now wore light gray. He walked home staying on side streets and walking down alleys, traveling a circuitous route till he was almost back to 237 Sims Avenue.

The next day, the story was all over the press. They dubbed the thief "The Acrobat". The security guard in the penthouse pegged The Acrobat as five foot eight and 150 pounds. Five foot two, 100 pound X snickered.

The press loved it. Here was a thief making daring robberies in exciting ways. They loved The Acrobat and the public loved the stories about him. Somehow the idea of this sort of thief seemed glamorous and exciting to the public. And both the public and the press had their complaints about the Singapore Police Department. The fact that they couldn't lay a hand on The Acrobat gave both groups the chance to snicker at the SPD.

Over the next year there were two more daring robberies by The Acrobat, another of a billionaire's penthouse condo and one of a billionaire's megayacht in marina bay.

ACROBAT STAGES ANOTHER DARING PENTHOUSE HEIST!

ACROBAT ON THE SEAS! INTREPID THIEF STEALS JEWELS OFF BILLIONAIRE'S YACHT!

The Singapore Police Department was under immense pressure to arrest someone. A significant part of the pressure was coming from banking institutions as it was noticed that The Acrobat had hit the heads of three different banking empires and, if the armored car theft was also attributed to him, one of the institutions itself.

The SPD moved manpower onto the case. Lieutenant Ling was one of the officers put on the case. The officers reassigned to the case tended to fall into one of two camps, those who were excited at the prospect of maybe becoming famous for breaking the case open and those who were despondent about it.

Lieutenant Ling was in the latter group. They had nothing on this Acrobat, whoever he was. A couple bits of grainy video, one from the armored car job, another from a security camera on that billionaire's yacht. That and some girl's smart phone footage of a completely undefined figure in black climbing up the side of that second apartment tower. That was it!

If a guy wasn't caught in the act most of the time he was caught spending money or in the act of fencing the stuff. The SPD had leaned on every informant they had in the line of fencing stolen goods. Nothing. They got nothing. No one had seen any of the stuff. None of it.

Ling did some of the leaning himself and so he got to twist some of these low level crooks' arms and casually add in, among the gold bars, cash and paintings the Acrobat had taken, a mention of platinum bars. Nothing on that, either.

The SPD started looking for correlations to the robberies in anything, anything at all. A sergeant perhaps prompted by the nickname "The Acrobat", noticed that a couple of the robberies lined up with visits to Singapore by the Halley Circus. They brought a couple of the trapeze artists in and grilled them but it went nowhere. They all had alibis that covered the times of the robberies.

Ling even made a visit to Mr. Park's outfit over on Prinsep Street. Fucking Park with his pretensions and his payoffs. The staff didn't even want to let him in the door. He had to force the door open with his shoulder and then flash his badge and his gun. Ling momentarily lamented that the SPD wasn't as disciplined and loyal as Mr. Park's outfit. Just a high end fence for god's sake but SPD had never gotten anything on them and they paid off all the way to the top and everyone in SPD knew it.

Still, their ships and planes had been searched just like everyone else's and none of The Acrobat's swag had turned up with them either. But Ling was desperate. He waved his gun and demanded to speak to Mr. Park. The guy at the door rolled his eyes. He didn't flinch or cower or anything. He didn't say a word. He just started walking calmly up the stairs. Ling followed behind him. They guy walked down a hall and as they got to a certain doorway, Ling saw Mr. Park behind a desk and pushed past the guy into that office.

If the guy at the door had made him feel his desperation with his calm, Park and the kid infuriated him with theirs. Ling rushed into the room. Behind a magnificent desk sat big Mr. Park filling out paper work. Ling wasn't sure he ever looked up even once. In a chair off in the corner of the room, with one leg dangling over the side was a skinny, pretty boy kid in an expensive light gray suit, the kid's dangling foot, in a thousand dollar shoe, swaying back and forth.

Ling angrily told Mr. Park that he knew that he and his organization were the fences for The Acrobat and threatened him that this was his only chance to come clean. He shouted that, when they caught him afterward, they'd throw the book at him. They'd make up extra charges and they'd put him and every one of his men in the shittiest jail they could find for life. Ling went on for a couple minutes. It was some of his best bluster.

Mr. Park didn't even look up. Not once. When he finished, Ling waited for some kind of response. He shot an angry look at the kid. His dangling leg never stopped swaying back and forth, it didn't slow down. It didn't speed up. The kid couldn't have been more than 14 years old. His focused but blase facial expression didn't change at all. It was like he wasn't even there.

He felt a fury rising up in him. He wanted to scream or shoot one of them, anything to make them notice him. I'm here, dammit! I'm a police lieutenant! Pay attention to me!

Mr. Park just kept filling out some paperwork. Several moments passed and he let out the slightest sigh and intoned downward toward his papers, "The way out is the same as the way you came in. Close the door firmly."

He pushed one paper out of the way and started on another. For a moment Ling felt even greater fury but then their assertion of his irrelevance overtook him and he trudged wearily out of their office, down the hall, down the stairs and out to the street. He closed the door firmly behind himself.

But the SPD had been right. Fencing the goods was an issue. X, Hao and Yong hadn't figured a way around it till finally X came up with the solution.

"Guys," he told Hao and Yong leaning over the edge of his bed with math books open at the start of another homework session, "we're going to join a gang."


	9. Ang Soon Thong and the criminal trade

The discussion followed the usual pattern. It was like kabuki theater by now among the three of them. The roles and lines were so predictable. X puts forth an idea. Hao and especially Yong think it's too risky. X eventually gets his way.

Hao and Yong were reluctant to join a gang but X explained why they needed to do it. It would give them connections to fences so that they could get money for some of the platinum bars they'd taken from Lieutenant Ling. He wore them down to accepting his point of view. Finally, they agreed that they'd join the local gang in charge of prostitution and illegal gambling in the Geylang section of Singapore where they lived.

It was called Ang Soon Thong. All three boys were familiar with them. They'd seen the gang members. You saw certain guys on the street who . . just didn't fit. They weren't family guys. They weren't students. They weren't kids. They didn't seem to be working. They were sort of sketchy and they had a slightly dangerous vibe about them.

X told Hao and Yong that their headquarters was a room above a certain garage at the back of a lot several blocks away from his and his mother's apartment. In his late night walks he'd seen them all filter over to that property and then seen them through the windows arguing about something.

The discussion among the three 13 year olds turned to how much to disclose. The gang would have to get a cut. That's how these things worked, right? So, they wanted to disclose part of what they had, create some good will by kicking in some serious money to the gang but keep most of it. They finally settled on five platinum bars.

Hao thought of one last complication. Gang initiation. Didn't you have to fight sometimes as a gang initiation? But X had an answer for that one, too. And Hao and Yong actually kind of liked his response on that point.

So, three nights later, with no warning, X, Hao and Yong showed up at the garage several blocks away. They made their way up the outside stairs and knocked. X went in first. There were three young guys in a single large, 20 foot by 40 foot room with various automotive and other junk spread around the periphery. There were two smaller guys, one wearing dark glasses indoors and the other with an elaborate fade haircut standing flanking a bigger guy with dyed red hair and covered neck down in tattoos.

X pretended to stumble as he went through the door. Yong gave him a boot in the ass sending him flying onto the floor. "Can't you do anything right, Chopstick?" he sneered. X got up and advanced angrily on Yong but Hao grabbed him by the collar and spun him around.

"You want to get beat up again? Seriously?" He gave X a rough shove forward toward the three gang members. "Do the talking, Chopstick. That's what you're good at."

X advanced to the tatooed leader of the gang. "Chopstick, huh?" he snickered.

It was an actual nickname X had heard. There was an obese british boy at school he really disliked whom he would call "Fat Limey". This boy's comeback was to call X "Chopstick" for how thin he was."

X shrugged. "I'm thin."

"Well, okay, Chopstick," the leader grinned confidently, showing two gold teeth. "What are you and your buddies here for?"

"We want in," said X.

"You want in?" the tattooed leader chuckled followed by echo chuckles from the other two.

"You think you're good enough for Ang Soon Thong?!" laughed one of the other two. "You shrimps?!"

X gave their pitch. Basically it amounted to the fact that he, Hao and Yong had pulled some jobs and because Ang Soon Thong was the gang in their area, they should be affiliated with them. When he finished, Hao stepped forward, pulled his backpack off his shoulder and dropped a 100 ounce platinum bar on the battered table next to the leader.

It was like a piece of the sun made physical right there in front of them. The eyes of the leader and the two other guys went wide staring at the brilliant, shiny bar passing it back and forth among themselves.

"Where'd you get this?" asked the incredulous leader looking at the three thirteen year old boys.

Now Yong stepped forward. "We wouldn't be any good at the game if we talked about it. Me and Hao," he nodded to big eared Hao next to him, "worked a job."

"Hey! I helped, too!" complained X over his shoulder.

Hao rolled his eyes. "He did, too."

"So, what do you guys want?" asked the leader dropping the bar on table with a satisfyingly deep toned thud.

"We want to join. We'd get your connections to help fence stuff like," Yong nodded toward the bar. "And we kick in the standard percentage to the gang."

"Half!" declared the leader.

"One quarter," declared Yong.

The leader picked the bar up off the table. "Yeah, well we already got your bar. We could take 100 percent of it."

"But you'd get zero percent of the others we've got," replied Yong.

"How many more you got?" asked the one in sunglasses.

Yong shook his head, calmly. "We wouldn't be any good if we talked about it. We've got more."

After a moment of indecision the leader, whose head had been bobbing slightly as he thought about this, let the bob get deeper and deeper and finally graduate into a full on nod. "Okay," he said then added the question, "You know how much this thing is worth?"

"A hundred forty thousand Singapore dollars," said Hao.

The leader and the two flunkies all spit out pleased expletives. For a minute it looked like they might get out of there without any violence. But the flunkies couldn't stand that. Sunglasses pointed out that he wasn't allowed in without a fight. The other agreed. Hao and Yong demurred. They noted that even the two flunkies were much bigger than all three of them. And they noted that they weren't going to work as enforcers for Ang Soon Thong. But, just as a somber mood was filling the room, X said that he'd been ready to fight.

Hao and Yong snickered. Hao gave X a boot in the ass sending him to the floor. He charged back at Hao who snickered, "You want me to kick your ass again, Chopstick?" X backed down.

"I . . I was ready for it. All I'm saying is I was ready to. I was willing to!" he protested to the whole room.

Sunglasses and Fade smirked at each other. Oh, you were, huh?

Me! No me! Finally, after some unspoken communication, Sunglasses stepped forward toward X with a big grin and his fists raised. "Okay, Chopstick. Let's see what you got!"

At first, X held back. He wasn't supposed to be a great fighter. He was supposed to be intimidated by Hao and Yong. But it was harder than he'd thought it would be to just lose a little bit. That was his idea. Just lose a little bit at first to make the act seem real. So, at first, Sunglasses got a couple good kicks and punches in at X, better kicks and punches than X had intended to allow. He'd intended to let the other guy win a bit longer but this losing intentionally was hard to do. And he had his pride. This guy was nothing.

X started beating the flunky to the punch. And he whirled and kicked him several times, shocking the guy with what a powerful blow a skinny 13 year old packed. After being pushed into a corner himself, X drove the flunky across the room leaving him bruised and bloodied. If it had been a wrestling match the guy would have tapped out. The fight stopped when Yong grabbed X from behind with a chuckle. "Damn, Chopstick. You actually did pay attention to some of what Hao and I've been trying to teach you."

Yong, X and Hao retreated back to the doorway and there was a halting, sort of stutter step negotiation worked out where, okay, they'd shown that they could fight and the guys would come back in a week and get their take for this bar and they'd talk about some more.

All in all it was pretty satisfying. The guys were now members of the Ang Soon Thong gang. A week later all three showed up and Tatts handed Yong an oversized envelope with 52,500 Singapore dollars in it. The fence had given the gang half value for the bar, 70,000 and Tatts, as they came to know the leader, had taken the gang's quarter of that, 17,500.

X had told Hao and Yong that the fence would probably take some percentage like that so Hao and Yong weren't surprised. As a show of their acceptance of this arrangement, the schoolboys brought four more bars. Yong laid them on the table. Everyone agreed on the same arrangement. There were smiles all around.

This was found money for the gang. And it was sorely needed. There had been a problem at one of their illegal gambling joints over the weekend. That fucking Officer Chen, the hard ass jerk who gave people on the streets tickets for jaywalking and throwing gum on the sidewalk, had busted it up. There was bail to pay and players' feathers to smooth over. They had to find a whole new place for the game. Lots of hassles. And one of the pimps, well, there were strong suspicions that money that he was supposed to kick up to Ang Soon Thong had gone into his veins or up his nose. Maybe both.

Lots of hassles. But suddenly there was 17,500 to help smooth it over and another 70,000 coming with four more bars. And the gang didn't have to do anything! Just fence the bars. It was almost too good to be true. Tatts asked, aloud, if he should worry that the boys were really cops or working for the cops. Yong said that he could follow them to Eunos Primary School and see if they met with any cops there in their english or math classes. As an extra show of transparency on this issue, he lifted up his shirt as did Hao to show they weren't wearing a wire. X unbuttoned his.

"If you guys are just schoolboys then why'd you get into this?" asked Tatts.

"There are a lot of rotten people who take advantage of the system," said X. "We just saw how to take back from some of them."

This was good enough. On that note, the boys departed. Hao and Yong seldom came back. They did see Sunglasses, across the street, outside of Eunos a few days later checking on them. They waved to him. But the gang was satisfied. Hao and Yong were scarce after that. But X was there at their meeting place over the garage often. He made a stop at the room over the garage nearly every other night as part of his late night walks around Singapore. And free from having to project a fake subservience to Hao and Yong, X was himself.

It didn't take the gang members long to suspect that it had been a bit of an act. They could see that the kid was sharp and tough. Those first couple times he'd had a weird air of subservience about him. But ever since then he gave off a vibe of quiet confidence. He noticed everything and he didn't back down to anyone. Fade Haircut was feeling cocky one night and, after a few beers, challenged X to a fight not really out of anger but for fun. He was curious. X stared him down and gave a slight shake of the head.

You don't want to do that.

But the guy outweighed X by at least 30 pounds. He wouldn't take no for an answer and charged at X who, in one lightning quick motion sidestepped him and, as he was going by, grabbed his shirt with both hands throwing him hard against the wall behind him. The guy was half knocked out. He stumbled to his feet then staggered uncontrollably toward a folding chair, pushing it almost away from himself and coming to rest with his head on the seat of it.

Tatts smirked at X. "Sorry, Chopstick. It's nothing personal."

Neither was the incident with Officer Chen. The whole thing with Officer Chen's hat hadn't been planned. It was just a spur of the moment thing. X had walked home from school with Hao and Yong and they'd both peeled off toward their respective apartment buildings. So it was just X alone as he walked by the gang's headquarters. The gang members, as usual, were doing nothing and, for no particular reason, maybe subconsciously drawn by X's sense of purpose, they started walking with him. A block or so from his apartment building they saw Officer Chen standing on the street corner of a busy intersection.

The gang members all started cursing him. They hated the guy. Even by Singapore's strict standards he was a ridiculously by the book sort of guy. Tatt's grabbed X's arm, stopping him, and leaned in close to him.

"You know, you guys kind of got off light in the initiation department, X. There used to be a thing, even before my time where the initiation was that you had to steal something from a cop, his hat or his notepad or night stick or, shit, one guy stole a cop's car one time. That's what they told me. Just . . . just get his hat.

X glanced over at Tatts skeptically. "That guy?" asked X nodding at the officer at the corner. Tatts nodded.

"Steal his hat? And go where with it?"

Just run off down the street, explained Tatts.

X sighed then shrugged. Okay. But first he grabbed Sunglasses shades off his head and the baseball cap that Fade was wearing and put them both on. He stepped over to the edge of the sidewalk and hid his books behind some bushes.

"And call him 'Dumpy'," urged Tatts to smirking nods from Sunglasses and Fade.

X loped across the street smoothly dodging traffic. He arrived at the other side where Chen was already writing a ticket for jaywalking in his book when X sped up, running right at him and snatched his hat off his balding head.

"Hey!"

"Thanks, Dumpy!"

X sprinted off down a congested sidewalk. He didn't have any fear because there was no way some cop could possibly keep up with him. He was the fastest boy in Eunos Primary School. But this was no ordinary cop. Officer Chen was almost maniacally dedicated and part of that dedication had been to keep up the long distance running at which he'd won awards in high school. X shot out to a huge lead, half a block ahead of Chen but he couldn't gain any more and to his exasperation, the cop kept getting closer after that.

He had bad luck with the crowds, too. The people he weaved and dodged past parted before Chen got to them so he kept blazing a trail through school kids, moms and old men the hard way, an elbow into this one a step sideways to get around that one while Chen kept getting a clear path to run.

A few blocks up, Chen was getting close and X sprinted around a corner, taking it without slowing down at all and gained some more gap. But this was now distance running and 13 year old X was not a great distance runner. His lungs burned and his legs now ached but he kept going, glancing over his shoulder at the cop who got closer and closer but didn't seem to get tired.

The cop intermittently shouted at him, citing the legal codes by which he said X would be prosecuted and the punishments he'd receive. " . . section 403, interference in a police officer in the execution of his duty. They'll cane your little ass for that!" he shouted as he was getting close and X, again, took a full speed 90 degree turn. If this chase could just be all turns he'd be in the clear.

X was getting to the limit of what he could do now. His lungs were positively on fire. He was now running down a nearly deserted street with just a couple of construction dumpsters along the sides. He recognized it because he knew every street in Singapore. Even though the cop was closing in again, just 5 feet back now, he felt a burst of optimism. He had a plan. He jumped into the street, perfectly weaving between two signs and the cop didn't get off the curb till after that, giving X another couple feet. But the damn cop just never slowed down and he gained that distance back in the next 50 yards.

Finally, they were approaching the high fence around the construction of a new apartment complex. The fence had no gaps. It was 12 feet high and, with a last burst of energy, X sprinted right at it. One long stride away, he leaped. He got one hand into the chain link almost at the top. He got the other hand, with cop's hat still in it, onto the rough top of the fence, one sneaker solidly into the chain link and then the other one over the top.

The whole motion looked as smooth to the cop as if it was a gymnastics maneuver that had been practiced endlessly. He'd stopped short of the fence. The ease with which the boy had vaulted the high fence hadn't made it seem more easily possible for him. It made chasing this boy seem impossible. And now, as the boy got to his feet on the other side, he told him all the codes he'd be prosecuted for breaking, adding to it the section in regard to trespassing.

X had gulped a few desperate deep breaths putting out the fire in his lungs and then pulled the hat down tight and turned around to face the cop. From 10 feet beyond the fence, he unzipped his pants and whipped out his great big one in broad daylight. He tossed the cop's hat onto the ground in front of him.

"Here's what I think of you and your codes, Dumpy!" he shouted and then proceeded to piss all over the hat. The cop was so mad now that he was sputtering fragments of words and sections of the laws of Singapore. The fragments coalesced into curses when a gust of wind came up behind X blowing his spray all over Chen.

X laughed, zipped up and loped off. He had another nemesis cop in the Singapore Police Department but he could live with that. He made his way back to Tatts and the others and gave Tatts a punch in the shoulder. "Why didn't you tell me that he could run?! I thought he was just another cop!"

Tatts and the others laughed. They thought it was even funnier when X told them how the chase ended. X didn't think it was so funny. He wanted two things out of the gang, the ability to fence stolen goods and some education. Risking his freedom for a cop's hat was not a worthwhile bargain.

One of the first things he wanted to find out was through whom they fenced the bars. X heard Tatts refer to a Chung and to a Mr. Park. He spoke of the latter in a more respectful, almost deferential way so that was the name that X remembered. The gang members had no intention of telling X how to get in touch with these fences himself but these guys weren't exactly models of discipline and secrecy. It was easy for X to just listen to everything the gang members said and eventually they said something about Mr. Park's outfit being at the red door on Prinsep Street.

But the most intriguing things that X heard always seemed to refer to "the old man". When there was a question about how to do something, set up a new illegal gambling place, who to pay off at the SPD, who to go to to fence something, or what kind of alarm to use at a gang owned place, as likely as not, Tatts would throw up his hands and say, "Aw, go see the old man."

A couple times X heard one or another of the other gang members refer to "the old man" and usually with some exasperation but always with some deference as well. This old man seemed to be the expert the gang consulted everything. From the way they described him, X wondered if there was anything this "old man" didn't know. X had to meet him.

So, one day when X walked into Tattoo's room and heard him sighing into his phone with exasperation, "Yeah, I'll get you your lunch, old man. You'll get it right away . . . no, the fucking order won't get messed up! No one messed up the last- . . . !" Tatts sputtered, looking around the room. "He hung up! Fucking old man hung up on me."

He turned to one of the other boys and handed him a small envelope. "Here. Take this to the old man and get him a-"

X stepped forward. "I'll take it. I want to meet this guy."

Tattoos smirked. "Oh, you want to meet him?"

X nodded.

"Okay. See how you enjoy getting dumped on." He handed X the envelope and then a few bills. "Get him a sandwich, too."

"What kind?"

"Doesn't matter."

"But what about the order being messed up? You just said-"

Tattoos groaned and pushed him toward the door shouting an address and apartment number after him.

X hustled out the building and down to the sweltering street. He puzzled at this inconsistency about the old man's lunch. The address wasn't far away. Luckily just outside that building was a street vendor. X used some of his money and bought two completely different sandwiches. He made his way up to the designated apartment on an upper floor of a modest building and knocked on the door.

"Sir. I have your lunch."

The door cracked open an inch. X could see a slender, white haired man staring out at him skeptically.

"Who the hell are you?"

"I'm Xavier Li, sir. They-they call me 'X'. I'm sort of loosely affiliated with Tattoos."

"What?!

"I've got your lunch."

X stepped forward as though to enter but the old man had not opened the door any further and shook his head dismissively. "Just a minute," he said with a gesture for X to wait there. The old man stepped back a little from the door and X could hear him calling Tattoos.

"What the fuck are you doing? There's some kid in school clothes here. He . . . . yeah, that's what he said his name is. Hey, that kid Cho is an idiot but at least I know him. I . . . . seriously?" The old man glanced at X out in the hallway again. "Fine, but I ain't goin' for any more of this shit! I'm very particular about my lunch. I'm an old man. I have to be careful. I'm not going back in the hospital! That place sucks! And I'm not gonna have you send me there because you fuck up my lunch!"

The old man hung up the phone with an angry snap of his wrist and gestured for X to enter. He stepped inside. The small apartment was surprisingly well furnished but in a style that X had never seen before. It was impressive but simple. It wasn't really asian but he didn't know what to call it.

The old man went over to a small dining room table and sat down with a sigh gesturing for X to also sit down. He pointed to X's bag with the sandwiches.

"What do you got?"

X nervously produced the two different sandwiches from the bag.

"I'll take whichever one you don't want," said the old man."

"But I thought you were saying-"

"I'm fine with anything. Give me that one," he said reaching for the nearer one.

"But you said you're particular about-"

"Kid. Lunch doesn't mean lunch."

"What?"

"X? Is that what I should call you? He said you're really smart. You think I would mention anything serious to him on the phone. He's a common fool. It's only a matter of time till the cops catch him on something."

"Then why do you work with-"

"Kid. I was Ang Soon Thong thirty years ago. Three years ago, the cops hauled off most of the gang. I'm too fucking old to go anywhere else and I don't want to. Let that fake red haired idiot run things as long as he doesn't take me down. Koh'll be back. He's got three more years to do. It'll be a real outfit again then."

X gave a slight nod. The old man took a huge bite of his sandwich. He nodded. Good stuff. Then he got up and went over to the kitchen and his nice modern refrigerator.

"What do you want to drink, kid?"

"How 'bout iced tea?"

The old man shrugged, used to the gang members always trying to show how tough they were and asking for hard liquor. He poured both of them glasses of iced tea. He sat back down and held out his hand. Give. It took X a second before he realized what he wanted and fished the small envelope out from inside his shirt and handed it to him. He waited a minute through two sips of iced tea and a whole range of expressions from the old man from initial interest to befuddled to the glimmer of a solution.

"Sir? Is it within bounds for me to ask what that is?"

The old man took several moments before going from a quizzical look at X to asking, "How are you in this game anyway, kid?"

"It's hard to explain," said X.

"You're too young to be associated with them. How old are you?"

"Thirteen."

"You've got too many years left to be around them. They'll take you down with them."

"My pals and I are just using them so that we can fence some things. We couldn't figure out any other way to do it," explained X.

"What kind of things?"

"Platinum bars, diamonds, paintings."

"Pretty high end stuff for a thirteen year old."

X shrugged. "And there's one more reason, sir. I want to learn."

"So, what am I, your tutor?"

X's eyes brightened at the prospect. "I'll pay you!" said X reaching for his wallet in his back pocket.

The old man gave a dismissive wave with one hand. "I don't need some kid's pocket change," he snorted.

X showed the old man the contents of his wallet which, at that moment, included over 1,000 Singapore dollars. The old man coughed.

"I spoke too soon."

X slapped a 100 Singapore dollar bill on the table. "Teach me about alarms," he said.

The old man sighed. "Just like that. All of a sudden I'm the criminal learning annex."

"The way the rest of the gang talks it sounds like you know everything."

"A moderately intelligent man looks like a genius to an ignorant fool," said the old man.

The old man sighed. "Before we start," he said, taking the bill off the table. "Let's get something straight. I ain't gonna be no half way teacher. You either buckle down and study hard and pay attention or you'll get one slap," he reached across the table and slapped X upside the head hard. "And after that I'll throw you out. I don't care how much money you've put on the table."

X nodded, showing he wasn't fazed at all by the slap. "Yes, sir."

After a short while X settled on a pattern of going to the old man's apartment three times a week, Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. X would listen with absolutely rapt attention. If only school was half as interesting as what he was learning from the old man. He would go home to his and his mother's apartment and then write down everything he could remember. He might have wanted to take notes while the old man was explaining alarms, safe cracking, fencing goods, pickpocketing, cons, how to follow someone without being seen, how to shake someone following you, the law, how to case a joint, how payoffs were done, different police procedures and the ways that a crew could work and split up its take. But he felt certain that the old man didn't want to see him with a notebook in his apartment.

X grew to respect the old man very much. He was working in crime but he was an honorable man and a very intelligent one. And the old man behaved a little bit like a father toward X. Yes, he'd had Grandpa Li watching out for him but Grandpa Li had always been there. The old man was proud of this new protege and, learning of what had happened to X's father, consciously went out of his way to be a good mentor to him.

He was impressed, too, that the boy didn't just immediately blurt out that he was The Acrobat to impress him. When he found out, he quizzed X in great detail about every aspect of the jobs he'd pulled. He liked how well the boy had thought through every aspect of them. There was almost nothing that the boy had done wrong on any of them. He laughed with the boy at how wrong the cops' ideas were of who The Acrobat might be and how poor the descriptions of The Acrobat were, especially that of the huge security guard whose ego probably couldn't accept that a kid less than half his weight had so quickly kicked his fat ass.

X absorbed these lessons and always came back with more questions, incisive questions that impressed the old man. And he always came to the old man wanting to know more. After a year of this tutelage he was still coming to the old man with more topics about which he wanted to know something. In the rare cases where the old man didn't know, such as in regard to computer hacking, the old man pointed him to someone else who did. On that particular topic, X watched the old man pick up the phone and call some guy "Huang". He said that he'd be sending a boy over with his sandwich in just a few minutes. He wrote a few lines on a note pad and stuffed it in an envelope. He told X to put it inside his shirt and sent him to a certain address several blocks away.

X went to the apartment at that address and then knocked on the door. From behind the door a voice shouted for him to explain why he was there. X thought he could see an eye at the peep hole of the door. He took the envelope out of his shirt and slid it under the door. Thirty seconds later the door opened and X could see the note and the envelope still burning in an ashtray. X never found out just what the old man had written. The hacker was an unshaven slob of a 25 year old. He seemed to be smoking every waking moment of the day. He let X in and sat down at the keyboard of a high end laptop. He wasn't nearly as nice or fatherly a tutor as the old man. He would bark out instructions and it was all X could do to type fast enough to only fall a little bit behind his shouted commands. But he taught X everything a top notch hacker could know in a month's time. X paid him well and only when he left that apartment for the last time, after 14 multi-hour lessons, did he realize that he had never learned the hacker's name nor told the hacker his. And it struck him, for the first time, that he had never been told the old man's name either.

One name that was specifically given to him was "Park". X had asked the old man to whom he should be fencing the take from The Acrobat's jobs. "Park," the old man immediately grunted with a tone as though the question was stupid.

"What about . . Chung?" asked X remembering the name of the other fence he'd heard the gang discuss.

The old man snorted laughter. "Chung?! You can't take nothin' high end to Chung's people. Park. There's Mr. Park and I hear he's breaking his son into the business, too. Kid about your age."

So, early one evening, X went to the shore, pulled off his clothes, dove in and found the bag with 45 platinum bars in it. He removed five. This was around 40 pounds of precious metal in total. He got them back up on shore, dried off, put his clothes back on and wrapped each bar in newspaper to eliminate any sounds, then stuffed them in his school book bag. He made his way to Prinsep Street and knocked on the door. A Malay background guy in a print shirt opened it half way.

"Yeah?"

"I have a potentially lucrative deal to offer Mr. Park. I would like to speak to him, if I may."

The guy gave him a look of scornful skepticism. He picked up a phone on the wall by the door.

" . . some kid is here, I mean, literally a kid. Can't be older than L'il Park. Says he's got a potentially lucrative deal to offer you."

"Tell him I offer the quintessence of money!" urged X.

The guy rolled his eyes. "Kid says to tell you that he offers the quintessence of money."

X couldn't hear what was said on the other end of the line. The guy at the door sniffed, "Yeah, that's what the kid said," part way through then gave a tilt of his head indicating surprise before hanging up. He waved X inside and patted him down before pointing up the stairs. "Up then to the left, third door on the right."

X jogged up, trying to not betray at all the weight in his backpack. He made sure to walk in the third door on the right standing tall and proud. Inside a room lined by bookcases was a big Chinese man, somewhat balding, in a suit, sitting behind a magnificent oak desk with oak leaves and laurel leaves carved into it, a desk fit for the captaining of any organization. Off to one side, in a corner of the room, was a boy about X's age, also slender, wearing a very expensive light gray suit and sitting with one leg dangling over the arm of a wooden chair.

"Mr. Park," said X stepping forward two paces from the desk. "I would like to strike a deal with you if we can come to mutually agreeable terms."

"A deal in regard to the quintessence of money," smiled Mr. Park.

"Yes," X said with a solemn nod. From his backpack he withdrew one 100 ounce platinum bar. He placed it carefully on the desk in front of Mr. Park. "This is the matter of which I speak," he added then stepped back. Mr. Park lifted it easily in one large hand, turning it over for the light to play off its surfaces at a variety of angles.

"We were recently approached with five of these bars," said Mr. Park, now looking only at X, sizing him up like a poker player regarding another with cards across the table. "Is this more of the same lot?"

X gave no hint of the cards he held. "Sir, I don't believe I am obliged to disclose the provenance of the goods which I offer."

Mr. Park smiled. "No, you are not though the standards of disclosure are typically somewhat . . . flexible, depending on the context of the apparent procurement of said goods."

"Sir, I procured these goods myself. I can tell you that the party from whom I . . acquired them is not able to openly contest their ownership."

He watched Mr. Park's eyes go back and forth as though he was reading the real story off the room's ceiling before finally chuckling.

"Had I but known to whom I could offer my wares I would never have approached the intermediaries whom you have previously encountered."

"The bullion robbery three years ago in which 50 of the bars were never recovered," declared Mr. Park. "At least . . . that was the Singapore Police Department's official story."

"Yes, sir. That was the official story," X smiled.

"Well, I am always interested in the purchase of precious metals, especially when the other party is intelligent enough to realize that they are the quintessence of money. We have already established the price through previous transactions. The value of that bar," he nodded down toward the one on his desk, "is 140,000 Singapore dollars. I will give you 70,000 Singapore dollars for each bar."

X calmly shook his head. He stepped forward and picked the platinum bar up off the desk and carefully wrapped it in newspaper before returning it to his backpack.

"Those terms are not acceptable to me."

"But why not?" said Mr. Park. "Those terms have already been agreed to."

"Not by me, Sir. You were dealing with fools whom I had acting on my behalf solely due to my ignorance. And we have now progressed nearly a year further from my procurement of these goods. Their notoriety lessens with each passing day. No, Sir. I will not accept receiving in return only half the value of such a liquid asset."

With that, X slung the bag roughly over his shoulder making no effort to disguise that he had multiple bars with him and started to march out of the room. At the door he heard Mr. Park's voice. "Young man! Come back here! We should be able to arrive at mutually agreeable compensation."

X slowly reversed course. He stood tall before the desk and calmly removed all five bars from his backpack laying them down on the desk in front of Mr. Park. "I very much wish to strike a deal with you, Mr. Park. I have many other items of great value of different kinds the acquisition of which may interest you. So, I would like to establish a trading relationship with you. But I'm sure you understand that I cannot do so at terms which are not fair to me."

"Of course not. But what do you consider to be fair terms?"

"I should receive 100,000 Singapore dollars for each of these bars," said X.

"That's out of the question," declared Mr. Park. "Eighty thousand."

X started picking up the bars again, once more carefully wrapping each in newspaper and filling his bag with them all without saying a word. he started for the door. He was stopped again at the doorway.

"Young man! Stop! Come back here."

X returned with a slowness of stride betraying reluctance.

"I cannot pay you $100,000 for each bar. I will pay you . . . $95,000 for each of them. That's . . "

"-sixty seven point . . . eight six percent of their official value," said X impressing the man with the speed of his calculation.

"Do we have a deal, young man?"

"So long as that is the agreed upon price for all of the hundred ounce platinum bars that I bring you," countered X.

"Agreed," said Mr. Park. They shook hands over the desk.

X carefully unwrapped the bars again and laid them down on the desk. He looked to Mr. Park and raised one eyebrow. My payment?

Mr. Park sighed. "Four hundred and seventy five thousand Singapore dollars. That is a significant sum, young man. Please go down and wait at the bottom of the stairs. Leave your bag here. We'll put the agreed amount in it.

X did as instructed. Ten minutes later, the guy who'd opened the door came down the stairs with his bag. He unzipped it and X counted the stacks of bills within. he picked one bundle of bills at random and quickly thumbed through it. The amount was correct. This was 475,000 Singapore dollars.

X nodded to the man, offered a quiet "Thank you" and left. That night, he got Hao and Yong to meet him at his apartment. They expressed a little irritation that X had done this without telling them but upping their take from 52,500 per bar to 95,000 made all that irritation go away . X divided the bills into three even piles repeating to Hao and Yong the usual admonition that they could only spend a thousand of it in the next couple months. His pals nodded. Of course. They knew the drill by now.

Though X sincerely meant these admonitions and they applied to him, too, it felt a bit pro forma to him. Being caught felt incredibly unlikely. X felt pretty close to invincible. This lasted right up until his first encounter with a superhero.


	10. A Time of Firsts

X first started noticing superheroes in the news when he was five years old. There were stories in the tv news, in the Straits Times and at web sites on line. He would stare in fascination at all of them but especially for any sight of Batman. He was X's favorite. His mother tried to tamp down her son's fixation with these almost supernatural beings. "It doesn't help to idolize these people you'll never meet, Xavier," she would tell him.

But his father didn't really try to discourage him. X eventually realized it was because Batman was Pop's favorite, too. X built up a collection of news stories and photos from The Straits Times, the biggest newspaper in Singapore. "Dark Knight Saves Gotham Again!" "Dark Knight Foils Joker, Saves 10 Lives". "Batman Exposes Corrupt Gotham Cops!". X could not get enough of Batman. His mother complained that X was using up the memory on the computer in the kitchen with Batman pictures.

When their families decided to let X, Hao and Yong go trick or treating on Halloween, there was no doubt. Yong went as a doctor. Hao went as a ninja. X was Batman. He got his father to spring the $20 extra for the really good Batman costume with the dark colors, the good cape, the right cowl and even the texture of the suit looking authentic. X was beside himself with joy wearing the costume that night. He spent the better part of an hour looking at himself in the mirror and imagining adventures.

When Hao and Yong showed up at his apartment to meet before going out for candy, X leaped out of a dark corner near the stairway startling Yong so that his stethoscope went flying. Just like Batman would do it!

Getting a bunch of free candy was cool but getting to dress up as Batman was the point of the night for little X. There was something about wearing a mask that was a little magical. You could be someone else if your real face wasn't seen. X was never a bully toward Hao and Yong but dressed up as Batman he was a little bossy toward them, even toward a ninja like Hao. What chance would a mere ninja have against Batman?!

It didn't seem to hurt X's performance in school at all and he still did all his chores and his training with Grandpa Li so his parents put up with it. But each year around Halloween, X's Batman fervor would go off the charts with the imminent opportunity for him to dress up as Batman again.

"Batman's the best, right Pop?" he asked one Halloween after he had just put on his costume and strode into the kitchen in his best imitation of being fearsome. Pop nodded.

"But why?" asked X confident in the fact but curious about its origin.

"Cause Batman doesn't take any shit from anybody," answered Pop.

"Language!" snapped his mother.

Pop shared a mischievous glance with him. "But the other ones are good, too, aren't they, Pop? Superman and Wonder Woman and Flash and Green Lantern and all."

Pop sniffed. "Superman. He's a big stiff just waiting around for a flag to salute."

X grinned but covered his cowl. Pop made fun of Superman! Was that even allowed?

"Flash is okay," he continued. "They say he talks to the bad guys like a real person. But bad guys get the drop on him and make him super fat and stuff and someone that fast should never have anybody get the drop on him. Nobody ever sneaks up on Batman, do they?"

X gave an emphatic shake of the head. Nope! Never! Pop went on to say how he liked Wonder Woman and Aquaman but that Green Lantern was kind of lame for his power being a piece of jewelry. Again, X covered his grin.

X even shook off the occasional critical article about Batman. It seemed like some of the time the Gotham City press was ungrateful despite all that Batman did. X showed Pop an article from one of the Gotham City papers that said that the authorities in Gotham City didn't really trust Batman. He read it to Pop after dinner one evening, wondering what Pop would think of that. Wasn't that a strike against Batman? But Pop only smiled.

"In a corrupt city like that, if officials say they don't trust you then maybe you're doing exactly the right thing," Pop grinned. X smiled along with him. Nothing could dislodge Batman as X's favorite.

After Pop went missing when X was eight, X spent a long time despondent over it. One of the things that helped snap him out of it was writing a letter to Batman. X spent hour upon hour crafting a 10 page, single space letter to Batman outlining everything he knew about the case and asking him to look into all the evil doings of the Rothschild banking empire. X sent the letter to Batman care of the Gotham City Police Department and fully expected to get a call a week or so letter with the other voice on the line being a deep, gravelly one asking him questions about his father's disappearance and those evil Rothschilds.

He had a dream that he was on the ledge of a building just beyond a warehouse with a sign saying "The Evil Rothschilds". Next to him on the ledge was Batman. And then Batman signaled him and they both jumped onto the roof then went into the warehouse through a skylight and punched out the heads of the Rothschild banking empire who were wearing tuxedos just like in the pictures of them that he'd seen. And then after the fight, Batman got away to avoid the dumb cops and when the Singapore Police showed up it was Lieutenant Ling. And X gave him a boot in the ass toward the warehouse door telling him, "Go do your job you coward!"

But after two weeks, the letter was returned unopened. It had a Gotham City Post Office stamp in red saying "UNDELIVERABLE". X was hurt but he didn't blame this on Batman. It was the fault of the Gotham City Police Department for not doing everything they could to work with Batman. He still held Batman in the highest regard.

That was part of why he was so hurt when there were suddenly reports and then pictures and video footage of Batman with a sidekick, X reacted with disgust. Who was this tiny little jerk that he should hang around with Batman?! X felt more than a little jealousy. And where Batman's uniform was so cool and so perfect for working in the shadows, the little jerk, this "Robin" wore the worst uniform ever. A yellow cape?! Bare legs and a green speedo?! Seriously? And what were those, elf shoes?!

When it was reported on line that another of the new sidekicks, no one could ever seem to pin down whether it was Speedy or Kid Flash or Aqualad or Wonder Girl, had referred to this little jerk Robin as "an elf shoed fascist", X laughed out loud in agreement.

And then, all of a sudden, there were stories, first just a few but then more and more till the tales were everywhere of a whole crop of new, young heroes. At first there was just Robin fighting beside Batman. But then there was Speedy beside Green Arrow and Wonder Girl, Bat Girl, Kid Flash, Aqualad and more. A whole new generation of heroes was suddenly on the scene.

To X's exasperation, the kids at school were completely taken with them. The girls pined for this Aqualad and Captain Marvel Junior most of all but some for little Robin and for Speedy and Kid Flash, too. Day after day it was *the* topic at school. Did you see Robin do this? Did you Aqualad do that? Didja? Didja? Didja?

He wanted to explode. There was a whole level of evil above anything these guys ever fought! They're fakes! If the cops only arrested people in the drug trade who stood out on a street corner handing cocaine to someone through an open car window but never went after the guys in the building behind them or the people supplying them, nobody would think very much of them, would they?

The first time X saw a super hero in person he was 13. Actually, he saw two.

It happened when he, Hao and Yong were walking home from school. It had been just another day at the drone factory. X found the drudgery of school almost unbearable these days. He would clear his lungs of school air with a deep sigh of relief upon stepping outside after each school day. This one had been particularly tiresome. He felt like the irritation of it had just left him and his mood was improving when, suddenly, with no build up to it, there were two blurs, a bigger red one and a smaller red and yellow one whooshing through all the streets around them. The blurs would only last a fraction of a second and you could sort of see which direction they were going. Maybe the blur faded from behind you a tiny fraction of a second before the blur faded in front of you. Also, you'd hear a sound, fffffft! Ffffffft! You could hear the sound coming from one direction and then going in the other. So, whatever it was that was red or red and yellow was going that way.

This lasted for nearly a minute with every person on the street looking around incredulously, partly trying to figure out what was happening, partly looking at others for confirmation. Fffffft! Fffffft! Ffffffft! Ffffffft! Do you see that? Do you see it, too?

Then the blurs showed up and disappeared in seemingly random patterns, none for a few seconds then the two blurs almost overlapping or crossing each other's path. The red blur and the red and yellow blur didn't seem to be coordinated with each other.

Finally, two amazing things happened. First, a few blocks ahead of X, Hao and Yong, a man in a weird orange and green outfit walked out of the plate glass front of a darkened storefront. He literally walked out of the glass. The glass didn't break. He just . . . walked right out of it.

Onlookers gasped, not only at this impossibility being true but the man had a fearsome scowl on his face, a look that no good could possible come from. "It's Mirror Master!" someone shouted. One of the worst villains Flash fought.

Then, just a second after that, the two blurs went right by X and his pals and materialized as Flash and Kid Flash in front of the man in the orange and green suit. As everyone watched, Flash and Kid Flash had a brief fight with the man. Well, to call it a fight was over selling it. First, Flash knocked some device out of his hand and then he and Kid Flash beat the tar out of the man, punching him faster than the eye could follow.

The man in the orange and green suit slumped to the sidewalk, unconscious. Danger apparently over, there was clapping and cheering and everyone on the street rushed up to where the two heroes stood. They both looked amazing. Their uniforms looked incredibly tight but neither one seemed to have an ounce of fat on him. Flash looked like a slender, impossibly fit olympic track and field champion. Kid Flash was like a boy version of Flash, even skinnier and with bright red, actually orange, hair spilling out the top of his uniform. Even if you didn't know that they were both super fast you could see it at a glance.

There were pockets of girls from Eunos Primary School in the crowd and they could be heard cooing and shrieking about Kid Flash. X, Hao and Yong rolled their eyes.

Flash said a few words to the crowd and then, to X's exasperation, a Singapore Police Department car pulled up and who should get out but Lieutenant Ling. X shook his head in disgust as the fraud cop got his picture taken with Flash and Kid Flash before they took off taking the villain Mirror Master with them.

The whole thing only lasted a couple minutes but it made a huge impression on Hao and Yong. They kept after X. How do you fight someone who can punch you faster than the eye can follow? How do you fight someone with super powers? What if "The Acrobat" runs up against someone like Flash or Kid Flash? What the hell could he do?

X brushed off their concerns, partly out of the knowledge that Singapore was not going to see any of these superheroes very often and partly out of annoyance at the way the girls around them could still be heard gasping about Kid Flash and how cute he was.

"Maybe The Acrobat will get super powers of his own," X finally suggested to end the discussion.

Shortly after that, The Acrobat pulled another job. The Straits Time and the other Singapore papers all had it on the front pages. Another high rise heist by The Acrobat of the penthouse apartment of another bank president. To keep up relations with the gang and partly as a thanks for introducing him to the old man, who'd taught him to get around an alarm system like the one in the penthouse, X gave Tatts, the gang leader, some gold bars to fence for him, even though he could have done it himself.

A week or so after that, just after X had turned 14, came reciprocity. X, Hao and Yong didn't know exactly what was up. Tatts only told them that they had to go to a certain address down the end of Sims Avenue at 8 o'clock that coming Friday. When X, Hao and Yong showed up they found none of the gang members there. When they stepped inside they were greeted by a woman wearing what looked like a black silk night gown. She pointed at each of them in turn as they entered. "And you must be . . Hao . . and Yong . . and Xavier."

X nodded, perplexed for a moment before realizing what was up. He leaned in close to Hao and then Yong in turn whispering the word "prostitutes". Before the guys could react to that, three women younger than the one who'd greeted them came out from behind a silk screen and each took the hand of one of the boys, seeming to know in advance who went with whom, and led each of them to a room upstairs.

X waited till the door was closed and immediately told his girl, a very attractive, thin, Chinese girl, "Look, it doesn't matter if you've already been paid-"

"Of course I've already been paid, silly," she interrupted while lighting a candle on a small table beside a king size bed. "Would this make sense if you still had to pay?" she added before turning back toward him.

"I mean, I can't ask you to . . . do anything just for money. If you don't want to, that's fine. I'll just-"

She laughed, brushing his cheek with her fingers. "The prettiest boy I have ever seen doesn't want me to do anything I don't want to," she said and gave another laugh. "What do you want, cheri? Do you not find me attractive?" she asked spinning around in a circle. X caught his breath at the sight of the young woman barely covered by a baby blue teddy. You didn't think of girls this beautiful doing . . . this.

He nodded. She was very attractive.

"What do you want?"

After a couple of moments of very serious thought as she moved to stand leaning right against him, her eyes just inches from his, he told her. "I want to know how to please you."

She gave a smile and started helping him off with his clothes. "Oh, cheri," she cooed against his bare shoulder. "Just wanting that is the biggest step toward it."

Outside the building 20 minutes later, Yong glanced down at his watch and then at the door. "C'mon guys," he grumbled to himself. But Hao didn't emerge from the building entrance for another 20 minutes and X not for another hour after that. When X finally joined his pals at the sidewalk, Yong was shaking his head.

"What took you so long?"

"It wasn't taking, Yong," said X.


	11. Xavier Li, ballet dancer -- part I

X trusted his instincts.

When something just felt right, X went with it and trusted that the reasons would become clear over time. As deeply analytical as X was and as painstakingly as he would plan jobs, it was still true that sometimes X made decisions because things just felt right because it felt that that was the way things should be.

Actually they didn't provoke any feeling in him at all it was more like a complete absence of tension because this was what he should be doing and in retrospect it was ridiculously obvious to him. It had been that way when he decided that he, Hao and Yong would take the platinum bars from corrupt Lieutenant Ling. It had been that way on each of the jobs he'd chosen since then, robbing the armored car and stealing from the various bank presidents.

He felt absolutely certain that each of these moves was right. They almost felt like a sort of destiny, as though right after deciding on each of them he could see how, of course, they were right for him. They almost had to happen.

It was the same way with ballet. Yes, there had been initial awkward feelings at wearing a dance belt and tights for the first time. That seam in the back! And the bulge in front! But he got over that quickly and then it was just a series of things that he mostly all liked doing and that he was terrifically good at. He was like a bird given his first chance to fly and finding that he could soar higher than any other. This was fun and he got to do it surrounded by pretty girls. This felt like he'd always been meant to do this. X knew. He knew this was what he would be.

Toward the end of his first class, he quietly approached the instructor and said, "Ma'am. I'm going to be a ballet dancer. What should I do to become better?"

She just stared at him. Not 'I want to be' but 'I'm going to be' in the calmest tone, as though it was a certainty. This boy!

He had walked in, such a handsome, slender boy and completely self assured. He had said he was there to watch Nur. She told him no. He could not just stand there at the edge of the studio all class and watch one of the girls, any of them or all of them. "I won't have my dancers being watched by a boy all class long. If you want to stay, you'll have to dance." To her surprise, he agreed to dance. But he immediately pleaded that he hadn't brought any workout clothes. For a moment he seemed to think that this was going to be good enough, that he'd get to stick around.

She had been honest. It wasn't a trick. She told him that she thought a boy had left some workout clothes. The last boy in her studio had been three years before. Or was it four? Five? Anyway, there was a bag of the things that he'd left stuffed into a corner of the bookshelf. She went and got it but quickly saw that it was a costume for a performance. A dance belt, white tights, white slippers a quilted velvet gold and white top and a belt. She had him go to the changing room. All the girls were already done and starting to stretch at the barre. Then she handed him the bag.

A minute later he carefully poked out only his head from the door and called for her. "Ma'am? Ma'am?" She approached and he muttered softly that it didn't seem to fit. She suppressed a smile and asked if he was dressed. He said that he was.

She discreetly entered the room and, over his objections, had helped him put on his tights and top as they were supposed to be worn.

"Oh, come on, Ma'am. Do you really need to . . ?! That far up . . ?!"

Finally done, she looked him over. The boy was made for tights. Slender with the perfect derriere. There was just one more thing. Such a handsome boy, with such a strong face. Wonderful eyes and cheekbones, but the wrong haircut. She applied mousse from a container visible at the top of one of the girls' bags to a brush visible at the top of another girl's bags and then brushed the boy's short hair forward on top but up in front. This framed his handsome face perfectly.

The slender boy spent a few minutes predictably anxious about his appearance. He first tried, in vain, to push down and diminish the extremely masculine presentation at the front of his tights. Then, a glance in the mirror at how explicitly his magnificent little derriere was displayed and he tried to pull the top down lower but got nowhere with this effort and realized he could not cover either front or back. He sighed and shook his head at the explicitness of the costume's display of him.

He gave her a plaintive look. "Do I have to go out there like this?"

She nodded then gave a soft chuckle. "You look exactly the way a boy should. You're perfect for ballet," she added. He wasn't any more pleased at this.

"I'm . . . " he inspected his reflection in the mirror.

"You will see," she told him. "Go out there and be just as confident as you were walking in here in your normal clothes and after a couple minutes you won't mind your costume at all. You may even like it."

He sighed and nodded. He stepped outside and she had him follow her to a table outside the door to her office. Every girl was gawking at the sight of this beautiful boy in white tights and a prince's top somehow there in their class. She could hear frantic whispers all over the studio. She took down the boy's basic information, his name, address and phone number. He was 14, quatorze she said writing it. She still peppered her english with french some 15 years after moving to Singapore where french was never used. Height, five foot ten, 1.78 meters, vingt six, 26 inch waist 32 inch inseam, size dix, 10 shoe. Hair noir and yeux medium brown. This formality done, she gestured for him to follow her over to where the girls all were at the barre. She thought she would never calm them down. She wasn't too hard on them. This slender boy was quite a sight.

She first had him stand at the street end of the studio not wanting him to spend his time ogling Nur. But this was even worse. The one boy was not so distracted but the 25 girls simply would not stop whispering and grinning at the sight of him, this amazing boy. She should have seen that she had made the wrong choice.

He regularly cast glances at Nur whether he was at the barre or about to leap across the studio but to her pleasant surprise, the boy was otherwise completely focused, deadly serious about every single task she put in front of him. After several minutes, she put him at the back of the class where it was easier to remind the girls "Madamoiselles! Fifth position does not require that you look in the back of the class where Monsieur Li is to be found!"

He really had no knowledge whatsoever of ballet. He didn't know any of the french terms or any of the basics of how you were supposed to do anything. He was not some sort of ringer pretending to be a neophyte who had actually had many years of instruction. That didn't seem out of the question, at first, because he did everything with such incredible ease. Even exercises designed to test and develop flexibility. She interrupted one of these and demanded that he, instead, drop into a full split. He did. She asked him to switch from doing a split with one leg forward and one back to one with his legs out to each side. Okay, he said and did that, too, just as easily. She didn't know what to say. Incroyable! Boys could never do these things unless they'd had years of training. Where had this boy come from?

When barre work was done she usually had all the girls do pointe work. She couldn't have a boy do pointe work. Even if he could physically do it, he was wearing a boy's soft ballet slippers not the hard, square toed slippers the ballerinas wore. Instead, she had him show her what he could do for a leap. That was a suitably boyish thing. And he grinned carrying out this instruction. She caught her breath. The boy could nearly leap out of the studio. She gave him some instruction mixed in with supervising the girls' pointe work. They, too, were watching him leap, eyes wide at how he made the ceiling seem much too low. She had him watch a video, on her laptop on the chair outside her office, of a dancer explaining how to do a series of leaps in a solo from Le Corsaire.

She had him do plies and other exercises at the barre nearest to the laptop while watching this. She figured this would occupy him for 15 minutes or more just realizing how many intricate preparatory steps he had to master do do the whole thing right. But, to her shock, he watched the thing once and then was leaping around the studio in a near perfect imitation of what he'd seen. She caught her breath. "Sacre bleu!"

She realized what her dumbfounded expression must have been while watching him from the way one of the girls giggled looking at her not the boy.

She tried another one, showing him a video of a dancer explaining how to do a certain spin. She returned to the girls but kept a watch on him out of the corner of her eye. She could see him sort of shift his weight from slipper to slipper as he was watching, getting a sense of it. And then he did that perfectly, too. He did that several times over. It was a difficult thing but he seemed to regard it as fun.

He seemed to regard all of it as fun. He clearly liked ballet.

This was when she placed the call to her friend at the Straits Times. She had started right away with pleading but her contact cut her short. She didn't need to plead. They were short of columns. These days, they were always short of stuff to fill the paper with the staff cuts that had been made. Sure, they could do a picture and a caption.

They ended up doing two pictures. She rolled her eyes seeing which photographer they'd sent. The short, balding, middle aged english one with the pony tail?! That guy?! He was still with them?! How had he not been picked up on some pedophile thing? He walked in the studio and she saw that he fell in love with the boy on the spot. She snickered at the crestfallen look on his face when they were setting up the picture of the boy partnering Nur and she explained to Mr. Ponytail that the boy was only there in order to be with Nur. He had to re-shoot the first picture, the one with X standing beside the girl, bent slightly, hands around her waist to support her as she lifted one leg behind her.

She loved that picture. It was flattering to both and both seemed to be very much enjoying themselves. The other picture was simply one of him leaping. And he obviously enjoyed himself doing that.

She thought the boy might balk at having his picture taken. Everyone will see me! That sort of thing. But he gave the slightest shrug and that was all. Maybe part of it was explained by the amazing and somewhat contradictory things she heard the girls saying to each other. Two of the girls were from his same class at his same school, Eunos Primary. There were also a couple of girls from classes after his at the same school. She overheard snippets of them talking about him to girls from other schools. The girls from his school seemed shocked that he was there in tights. They all called him "X", just the letter and not "Xavier". And they had an intriguing sort of respect for him, not fearful but maybe not much short of it.

She resolved to sit down with one of these girls because the snippets were so contradictory. She clearly overheard one from his class saying that this Li boy was the class valedictorian. This pleased her. But another whispered that everyone knew he was a gang member. And there were muttered references to him being a feared fighter and also hated by all the schools teachers and a hater of them in turn. There were even vague whispers of thievery.

She didn't know what to think but maybe there was danger associated with having this boy in her studio. Gang member? Thief?! It was too good to be true, wasn't it? She sighed. It had all been too perfect. A boy with a superlative shape for ballet and athletic ability but . . a gang member. Of course. She watched him carefully, looking for the slightest hint of corroboration of these rumors.

Later in the class, she set him up for a grueling run of lifting and carrying every girl across the studio multiple times. Who knew if this boy would be back? She wanted to let each girl enjoy a bit of partnering with a boy while there was one. Boys were rare in ballet classes. This slender boy was much stronger than she would have guessed and he had that certain touch. She regarded this as a test of character. It wasn't foolproof. A young man could like being with girls but be a playboy of some sort. But the really bad sorts couldn't devote themselves to making girls look good. It wasn't a question of whether a boy, or a man, preferred girls. It was a matter of instinctively working well with a partner. This Xavier Li enjoyed it and despite his slenderness he had surprising strength and picked every girl up and put her down with the lightest of touches, giving a slight smile to each that was returned many times over.

She thought he should be tired now. Parents had started filtering into the studio to pick up their girls and there was a buzz among them. A boy! There's a boy! Did you see the handsome boy? Over there! Who's that boy?!

Each of them saw their daughter partnered by this boy who hadn't known the slightest thing about partnering just a half hour before. But no one could tell that watching him.

Now, class was over and the girls were all going to the changing room. She had the boy show off again how he could leap. He loved it and the parents gaped at how amazingly high and far this boy jumped. She instructed him on stretching his legs out higher just as he reached his apogee to give the impression of resisting gravity itself. The ballon, she explained. He got it right the first time but kept practicing over and over. He didn't seem to get tired.

She casually drifted over to where the parents were just inside the door and pretended to be surprised by the desperate flurry of questions they asked. Mrs. Rousseau-Nguyen?! Who is he? Where did he come from?

Oh, Xavier? She said that she'd told them when she'd raised her rates earlier that year that the money would go into improving the girls' experience and of course part of that was bringing in a suitable boy. Xavier was the first one who'd passed muster.

And then Nur was there beside her and talking to her parents.

"Mom, Dad? I want you to meet Xavier."

The teacher waved Xavier over from where he stood on the far side of the studio. Rather than simply walk or jog over, he leaped and spun and leaped and spun around most of the perimeter of the room culminating in a landing and a bravura gesture right in front of Nur and her parents. He straightened up and bowed his head slightly.

"I'm Xavier Li," he said grinning and offering his hand to Nur's father then mother. His eyes went to their daughter with an intensity that everyone understood.

And then, after he'd changed back into his clothes he approached the teacher with his wallet out asking about the cost of signing up for lessons. She quoted him the standard price. He asked where he could buy tights and slippers and dance belts for himself. She said she would get them for him if he liked. He nodded and she quoted him a price. To her surprise, this 14 year old boy opened his wallet and had not only sufficient cash for the costs she'd quoted him but hundreds and hundreds more. Mon Dieu! The thick sheaf of bills in this boy's wallet, a 14 year old boy! He paid her and left a generous tip as well.

As much as Mrs. Rousseau-Nguyen was enjoying the appearance of Xavier Li in her ballet class, Nur should have been enjoying it even more. The girls all envied Nur. Back home at her room in her parents' mansion Nur reclined on her designer bed sighing at yet another congratulatory message coming in on her phone. Getting Xavier Li to put on tights and dance ballet just to be with her had been an enormous triumph for Nur.

She'd just met the boy for the first time the night before. She was in her usual spot at the high end Wheelock Place mall when this mysterious boy came by. He'd been staring intently at the HSBC Bank for a minute when he turned around and saw her. Their eyes met. He was hot. The boy came over and introduced himself. He asked about taking her to a movie. She said that the only way to see her was to go to her dance class. The other girls thought there was no way the boy would. But they hadn't seen the way the boy was looking at her. Sure enough, he'd just spent a couple hours in tights as the price to be around her. Pure triumph!

And yet . . .

She turned to her phone's insistent chirping. She was swamped with congratulations and salacious messages from other girls, and a couple gay boys, about her unprecedented triumph in taming this feral beast of a boy the way some of them had been talking, taming him all the way to getting him into white ballet tights. Girls in the ballet class had taken pictures of him on their phones, leaping, spinning, partnering Nur, and a couple from up close at hip level.

The girls from Eunos Primary were especially incredulous.

 _X?! Our X?! In tights and dancing ballet?!_

Nur texted back some clever remarks, the sorts of things she thought she'd be saying. But . . . somehow it was a bit by rote, a bit . . fake. She wasn't enjoying this to the hilt even though this was exactly the sort of thing that usually pleased her most.

Nur was a beautiful girl and had been recognized as such for as long as she could remember. She didn't have any hobbies or interests that particularly fixated her. And, because she didn't have strong enough interests or personality, the constant focus on her looks became the center of her days. Nur suffered the curse of beautiful girls that everything revolved around her beauty and the perception of it by anyone in her orbit. Like such blessed/cursed beautiful girls, Nur's life came to revolve around leveraging that perception into getting whatever it was she wanted.

This boy was very very hot and, to hear the stories the Eunos girls were telling, completely untamed. But she had bent him to her will to the extent that this boy had willingly dressed in full ballet costume, his impossibly round little ass out there for the whole world to see, just to be around her.

Her phone chirped again. She read another congratulatory message from that girl Durga from his school, from Eunos, a girl who didn't seem to like boys at all. . Attached to a link to one of the pictures of him leaping was the message

 _Congrats! U R femnist of yer for putting X Li in tights where hebelongs! Lets C how prettiest boy likes being on display!_

She tossed the phone down and leaned back against her pillows and head board. That was just it. That was why she felt more like a fake with every new congratulation or saucy comment.

The boy did like it. He actually liked it.

There had been an initial minute or two where he'd glanced at his reflection in the mirror and gave the slightest sigh with just a hint of worry. But after a few more minutes he didn't seem to care. For the rest of the class he went about the studio indifferent to who saw him in tights.

Okay, the boy was absolutely perfect for ballet. Tallish, slender, not a drop of fat on him, awesome calves and nice wide shoulders but a narrow waist and impossibly round rear. In front, the bulge suggested . . . She caught her breath. She'd have expected even a boy like that to be nervous walking around in tights for the first time. This boy wasn't. He didn't pose. He didn't try to get you to look at him but he didn't care. And he liked dancing ballet. He liked it.

It was like the fulfillment of an urban legend. Only it wasn't a legend. This time it had actually been done. She, Nur, had gotten a boy to dress in tights and take ballet just to be with her. As far as she knew, it had never been successfully executed before. The boy always backed away. Uh-uh! No way! Not that! Not even for you! But, at a glance she guessed that this boy could probably dance. So, why not try it? The school desperately needed boys.

He just said "Okay" and asked where the dance school was and when he needed to be there. She'd exulted all the previous night. The other girls had been shocked. The rumors about this boy were incredible. Ace student by day, who knew what by night. There were stories that he was essentially a gang leader and had beaten up guys much bigger than him. Multiple girls said they'd actually seen that. They'd seen him beat up boys, who had it coming, just off school grounds, boys as big as him and bigger. He was never a bully but he was a ferocious fighter. And there were also unsubstantiated stories that he was in a gang or something. There were other stories even crazier. But the one consistent element in all the stories was that no one could make Xavier Li do anything.

Now, this boy was going to take ballet just to be with her. She'd thrown her head back and laughed. But it didn't turn out anything like she'd expected. Oh, some of it did. Some of it was even better. The boy was in incredible shape and had the perfect rear for ballet tights. Perfect. Every girl in class wanted to pinch him. He could leap out of the studio and do splits and spins like he'd been dancing all his life. But, to her dismay, he didn't seem bothered by any of it, not the tights or the barre work or any of it.

But that was supposed to be part of the deal! That was the measure of how much he'd done, how much he'd given up to be with her. He was supposed to be on death's doorstep from embarrassment. Even when a couple boys had shown up on the sidewalk in front of the dance studio and pointed at him through the window in his tights he'd taken it in stride. He liked being a ballet dancer. He actually liked it. He liked partnering all the other girls, too. And they loved him

Nevertheless, she followed through on the implicit other side of their bargain. He became her boyfriend. It was easy enough to get her parents' implicit okay. Not that they were going to really stand in the way of her choosing any boy. But a boy who ran around in tights certainly didn't seem particularly dangerous to them. Nur carefully omitted any of the other things she'd heard about him and X was the model of courtesy with her parents. She'd never seen a boy with such perfect manners. Always "ma'am" and "sir" and all that crap. Even when he beat up those two kids who were threatening one of the new boys in class, Nur felt completely safe in mentioning it to her parents. He seemed completely safe to them. Even a little feral violence couldn't budge them off that perception.

She thought their relationship was safe, too. At least she thought she had it under control. She'd gotten the boy into tights for god's sake, how much trouble could there be in controlling this?

But right away things started spinning out of control. It wasn't that she had an explicit timetable for how things would go that had been violated. There wasn't anything written down or even a specific timetable in her head. But they'd gone to see a movie, dropped off and picked up by her parents. That was probably only supposed to be a kiss goodnight outing. But he started holding her hand in the dark of the theater. And then he leaned over and kissed her. Before she knew it, she had her hand down the back of his pants and they were french kissing. He'd been fondling her breast, hadn't he? What was that thing he was doing with his fingertip? That was really nice. Only the lights suddenly coming up at the end of the movie stopped more from happening.

Alone in her room after dropping him off at his crappy apartment building in the shitty Geylang section of the city, Nur reproached herself for letting him get so far. But, even as she did so, she couldn't help smiling just thinking of the feel of this boy's body under her hand.

The pattern repeated. Over the next couple weeks they were together after ballet class several times. Another movie. A long walk through her neighborhood, a dinner at a nearby high end restaurant. Despite the boy coming from the poor section of the city he paid the tab easily, discreetly flashing a wallet full of high denomination bills. Each time he got farther than she'd really intended. Each time she took a little more liberty with her own hands.

Then she had him over her house for a few hours one night and didn't let anything happen. Nothing. It took a great effort on her part too but there was the payoff in seeing how it agitated him. Finally, almost a month after he'd started taking ballet, they agreed to go to her house and practice some more the piece they were going to dance at the school's upcoming performance. They went from class straight to her family's huge house in her mother's SUV. The girls always changed first at the school. As soon as she was out, she tugged on his wrist telling him they should go right away and that they were just going to dance again in the huge foyer of her house. Why change? And he didn't. She got him to walk all the way out to their car, down a public sidewalk in light gray tights with his regular clothes in a bag. A couple passersby did double takes at this boy in tights.

In the car and once they got to her house he was his usual smart, polite self. Her mother just ate up the boy's whole persona. If only she knew. They weren't home long, and Nur had changed into her costume, when her father arrived home. Oh, hello Xavier. Good evening, Sir. All that crap. The politest prettiest boy ever. Her father was just as completely sold on him.

They told her parents that they were going to practice some more for the performance in two days. Her parents went out for dinner. And she and X really did practice. They went over their pas de deux several times. For a boy who didn't know a plie from a pair of pliers a few weeks back, he was a real pain in the ass about her doing everything just right.

"Nur! You have to clear my leg and then extend right away."

"Faster!"

"More extension!"

Who did the boy think he was?!

She really wanted to critique him right back but . . . the boy's dancing of this piece was so clean it was ridiculous. So, they went on like this for an hour, a full hour in the open expanse just inside the front door of her parents' mansion. And then her stupid little brother Kamal and his equally stupid malay friend dropped in. Ugh. The little idiots snickered at her like always and the two of them started to snicker and make remarks to X.

At first he said nothing. Then he gave Kamal a sharp glance. But the little idiot was too dumb to realize how much was behind that look. Now, Nur felt a growing delight in the expectation of what was to come. Kamal and his friend made a crack about boys in tights. X gave them one last look. Kamal started saying something more and a look of shock came over his face as X lifted him off the ground with a hand under his jaw and carried Kamal to the door with Kamal gurgling out his whiny idiot objections to no effect. He put him down, opened the door and gave Kamal a shove that sent him flying out onto the middle of the lawn. "Go to his house," commanded X before turning to the idiot friend who scurried out past him leaving the two of them alone.

She knew right then it would happen. But they practiced another 15 minutes. Then, at the end of the piece, he put her down and looked her in the eye. They kissed.

What shocked her afterward was how inevitable it all was. It completely had to happen, didn't it? What also shocked her was how good the boy was. Where had he learned to do that, that thing with his fingertip, and the one with his tongue, the swirling and then . . . ! Her first orgasm from someone else. And her second and her third. Where had he learned that?! It absolutely delighted her and yet . . . she felt . . .an undercurrent of something unpleasant. As right as this felt, something was now wrong at the core of this. She had lost control.

By the time her parents returned home, he'd changed into his regular clothes and she into hers. They had no idea.

And then, just a few days later, he was gone. There had been executives of the Singapore Ballet Academy at the little school's performance and they gave X a scholarship. But nobody else. She simmered with resentment that this boy who'd never danced ballet until a month ago was now the student they just had to have. Did they think he danced that pas de deux by himself? What was his part? All he did was support her and walk around her a couple times showing off his ass to the audience. Okay, so he had that solo where he wowed them with his leaping. Still, it wasn't fair!

And then he had the nerve to say that he would still show up at the school once a week and wanted to still be with her. She felt a brief fury. No, she told him, I'm moving on, too, though not from the school but from you. Now the undercurrent of feeling was warm. She cherished that first minute of his reaction. There was hurt there. There was definitely hurt there even if he did I good job of hiding it afterward. Who did he think he was?!

When he was walking home from his first ballet class and his new choice of a career X's thoughts were a whirl. He was a ballet dancer. Of that he had no doubt. That had all been so much fun and he was so good at it; it was so completely . . natural for him. That's the word that came to mind, natural. He thought of the teacher telling him that he was perfect for ballet. Yeah, that was how it felt. There could be no doubt, now, that he was a ballet dancer. Beyond his enjoyment of it and his natural skill at it he could see other benefits. If he went to this Singapore Ballet Academy that the teacher had mentioned to him then he'd be done with the regular schooling that he had grown to hate. On top of that, it would give him a way to make a clean break with the gang.

And finally, if he was part of the ballet it would help him meet more of the super rich scum he wanted to rob. His first target, Mr. Chee, had been a big patron of the ballet. When he became a professional ballet dancer he would meet the Mr. Chees of Singapore. They would think nothing of it. He would just be Xavier Li, ballet dancer. He would be closing in on a target.

He chuckled as he walked down Sims Avenue. He'd had no idea of any of this when he got up that morning. The whole thing was just a way to see that girl Nur. She was one of those girls who was so pretty that every guy young and old, chinese, british, malay and african all did a double take when she walked by. He vaguely knew that she was around his age but nothing more. He'd seen her a couple times at Wheelock Place mall but he didn't think she'd ever seen him. She didn't seem to have any specific boyfriend. So, when X saw her sitting there with a couple other girls he glided over to stand right before her. Their eyes locked. There wasn't much he wouldn't do to be with that girl. When she said that the only way he could be with her was to go to her dance class, well, fine.

So he would go to her dance class. He didn't really think it would end up the way it did but it turned out to be fantastic. After a few minutes, the whole wearing tights thing had kind of faded into the background and he'd had fun. And he'd been introduced to her parents. All in all it was a terrific day. But now he was going to have to get everyone else adjusted to the new reality that he was a ballet dancer. This wouldn't be easy.

First he talked to his mother. Almost as soon as he got inside the door and got the usual hug from her she asked him where he'd been. He explained it all, that he went to the dance school to be around that girl Nur and that he'd taken part in the ballet class. He'd not only taken part but he was terrific at it and he really liked it. He was meant for ballet, his body and his abilities. He could tell right away. It was his destiny.

He looked his mother in the eyes. "Mom, I'm going to be a ballet dancer."

Her reaction was a big sigh. "Are you sure, Xavier? Are you sure this is sensible?" She patted his gelled new hairstyle. He glanced up.

"Oh, that. I like it."

She tilted her head to the side taking it in. "It looks very good on you, Xavier. But are you sure about this ballet?"

He nodded. "I am, Mom."

She sighed and hugged him. She never said so explicitly but this amounted to an acceptance of his decision. Her hug felt wonderful and reassuring. If Mom could accept it then that made it seem more right. Now, he wondered how Hao and Yong would take it. After considering it, he became sure that they'd react with shock and think that their pal the feared fighter couldn't possibly be doing some sissy boy thing like ballet. He imagined them telling him to cut it out, to quit joking about this. You're too tough to be doing sissy boy ballet. He thought about how to explain to them that even a tough guy like him could enjoy dancing ballet.

A little while later, Hao and Yong arrived at his apartment for that night's homework session. X had his hand on the bookcase in his room doing plies from fifth position when he heard them come in. He hurried over to sit on his bed with one leg over the side. Hao and Yong entered with the barest of glances that sufficed for greetings among friends who saw each other all the time. They pulled up chairs to the foot of his bed as usual and opened their math books on top of it.

Hao started to talk about the math homework before X cut him off. "Look, I'm not sure how to build up to this, so I'm just gonna tell you guys straight out. I took a ballet class today and I'm going to be a ballet dancer."

He gave a gesture with his hands as if to say, there. There it is. Then he leaned back waiting for the explosion of denial.

Only there wasn't any. Hao and Yong both had their faces twisted up in deep contemplation for a few seconds before Hao said, "Yeah. I can see that."

"What?!" demanded X.

"Yeah. I can see it, too," agreed Yong, before adding. "Hey, what'd you do with your hair?"

"The-the ballet instructor did that. She said it makes me look better."

"Yeah, it does," agreed Hao. Yong nodded.

"But . . . you guys don't think there's anything wrong with me being a ballet dancer."

Hao shook his head. "You're so . . . graceful. I never thought about it but all that stuff you do, the way you hold on with one hand and spin at the bottom of the stairwells at school and walk on thin railings for like a hundred feet. The way you ran across the top of the fence when we took the platinum bars from that corrupt cop. I couldn't do that if you let me practice for a month. But you did it without even thinking about it. That's like ballet dancer stuff."

Yong nodded before his face melted into a grin. "And you can't stop dancing."

X sighed slightly angrily. "I can stop."

"No, you can't," chuckled Hao.

The guys had made fun of him before because more than any other boy at Eunos, X had a thing about dancing. Any time a car playing music went boy or someone played music loud enough for everyone to hear on the phone X would start dancing. They might be on the street corner just as school let out with a hundred other kids and in the middle of a conversation. A car stopped at a light would be providing a soundtrack to their escape from school and X would talk and listen while shimmying in place sometimes without even realizing he was doing it in perfect imitation of some guy they'd seen in a video.

"And you've got the booty," laughed Yong.

"Yeah," grinned Hao. "That's part of it, right? Show off your booty to rich women?"

Upset now that there hadn't been a word about him being too tough for ballet, X chided, "What, were you guys checking me out?"

Yong laughed. "Dude, we're around you all the time. We could hardly miss it. My little cousin and her friends call you 'Buns'."

X was surprised. "Really? Ling, the one with the hello kitty bag?"

Yong nodded. "And remember that time last year when you burst out the back of those jeans in that store?"

Hao and Yong both burst into laughter. "Soooooo funny," gasped Hao.

X fumed. "That's-that's why you try those jeans on, to make sure you don't get a pair that's smaller than they're supposed to be like those."

Hao and Yong just kept laughing. X stewed a little longer then calmed down.

"I'm serious, guys. I'm gonna be a ballet dancer. In a month I'm gonna be a student at this Ballet Academy place on Waterloo Street. The teacher told me about it. And I won't be going to Eunos at all."

"Wait, seriously?" asked Hao, interested now and leaning forward over the end of X's bed. "You won't have school at all? You just jump around and spin around all day?"

"I think I'll have a few hours of school each day there, too. But not like at Eunos. The-the point is that I want you guys to know what's coming up. It's gonna get me out of the gang, too. And I'll get to hobnob with all the super rich banker types who donate money to things like the ballet and opera and symphony."

Hao and Yong smirked and nodded. Smart.

"And I'll be surrounded by pretty girls in tights all day long, pretty girls that I get to pick up and hold and look at as party of my job."

Hao and Yong both raised eyebrows. Not too bad.


	12. Xavier Li, ballet dancer -- part II

To X's exasperation, he had the same experience with the gang. He thought they wouldn't believe that he, such a tough fighter, could possibly be a ballet dancer but, instead, Tatts and all the other guys immediately accepted it. You, a ballet dancer? Yeah. Sure. One told him that anyone could just see that X was that kind of pretty boy the way he glided when he walked.

At least the old man was a little surprised. But when X told him about all the side benefits, no more school, a way out of the gang and a way to insinuate himself into the world of his super rich targets, the old man gave him a pat on the shoulder and told him it was smart.

The reception at school was another thing.

X hadn't realized that in the first picture taken of him holding Nur by the waist, her leg up against his, that his rear in white tights would be clearly visible in the mirrors behind them. Between the pictures of him in the next day's issue of the Straits Times and all the photos of him in tights being passed around on smart phones, there might not have been a single person in the school who didn't know that X was now dancing ballet. Anyone and everyone who had any kind of ax to grind against X came forward to make fun of him. X didn't believe in fighting because of being called names and kids knew it. They knew that they could say a lot of stuff to X and he wouldn't hit them. Particularly in the first few days but for all of the next month, X couldn't go down the hallway at Eunos Primary School without one boy or another calling him a sissy boy or waving a limp wrist at him and twirling in a mock pirouette. Even some of the girls who didn't like X joined in. Even a couple teachers made a point of mentioning it in their lectures. "Who knows the answer? What about the ballet dancer, Mr. Li?"

He didn't dodge it or try to give some excuse for it like saying that he had to do it to satisfy his mother. He didn't even mention Nur even though he'd only been there in the first place because of her and he was dating her now. He said that he liked it. When some boys pressed him, he asked what boy wouldn't like being the only boy surrounded by 25 pretty girls.

But the other part of the truth was that he enjoyed dancing. He enjoyed just moving. He had to admit to himself that in the course of almost every job he had made some jump or leap or run that was part or mostly flourish, simply enjoying himself.

However, very soon he was not the only boy in ballet class. After the appearance of the photos in the Straits Times, another boy signed up the next day, two more the day after that and another the week after that. X was ambivalent about this. He'd kind of liked being the only boy in the class but if he started being a student at this Singapore Ballet Academy then there would be almost as many boys in the group as girls so he may as well get used to it.

The ballet teacher, Mrs. Rousseau-Nguyen, was also ambivalent. For years she'd wanted to have boys in her classes. It allowed for a more complete experience. It let her prepare students for what it really was to be a dancer. But these new boys were not like Xavier Li. A couple had some ability. But not like him. And she couldn't just point them to a video of some performance and have them quickly imitate it. After stretching and barre work, it would take more effort to keep the boys going doing one thing while the girls were doing another. And three more girls had signed up for classes.

To her pleasant surprise, the Li boy took it on himself to herd the other boys and make sure they were doing what they were supposed to, muttering comments and suggestions to correct their technique when she was on the other side of the studio helping the girls. He made amazing progress. If she corrected him about how he did something in one class he would never make that mistake again in the next class or any subsequent one.

She had forgotten all about the ominous things the girls had whispered about him till one afternoon two weeks into his time in her class. She hadn't even seen what had started it. She only noticed that something was up when X, in his light gray tights and white t-shirt, jogged past her as she was instructing three girls in proper battement tendu. He continued out to the studio door. She heard the whoosh of the door opening and closing. Then she rushed to the front of the studio with all the girls and the other boys. Word quickly spread, two English boys out on the street had been taunting one of the new boys, Cho, since the start of the class. Someone said they'd made threats to him.

They were inches from the front window of the studio now, giving the kill sign with index fingers traced across their throats completely unaware that X had run out the door. As all the ballerinas and the other four boys watched, he grabbed both by their collars and, in a startling show of strength, slender X threw one to the sidewalk like discarding a candy wrapper and took one step backward with the other throwing him, face first, into a parking restriction sign several feet away. These boys were both about as tall as X and perhaps heavier. But he overpowered them. The one he'd thrown to the sidewalk started toward him and X gave him a side kick that bounced him off the fender of a parked truck. The other one was on his knees beneath the sign making no effort to do anything to X but X stood him up and gave him four hard slaps across the face in rapid succession clearly audible through the big studio window. Whack!Whack!Whack!Whack! Forehand!Backhand!Forehand!Backhand!

"Wow!" gasped several of the ballerinas.

A young mother went by, almost brushing against X's gray clad calf with her baby stroller, looking worried and picking up her pace.

"You're not going to bother Cho or any other boy taking ballet, again, are you?" he grunted from up close to the cowering boy who now seemed to have shrunk to being smaller than X. From inside the studio, they weren't sure that the boy was saying anything back. X let go of him for a moment and reached down and grabbed the other boy off the sidewalk next to the truck. The boy was whimpering and holding his stomach. X stood him up and grabbed the boy he'd slapped and dragged both over and pressed them roughly up against the plate glass window at the front of the studio.

"Get a camera!" he shouted over his shoulder to the spectators inside. In a second, one girl was back with her phone. X arranged their arms and then pushed their heads together so that it looked like the two were kissing. He wrapped his hand in the shirt of one so that it couldn't be seen.

Click! Click! Click!

"Got it!" chirped the ballerina who'd taken the picture, tapping on the plate glass window and giving X the "okay" sign.

"So, now we've got a picture of you two that will go everywhere in Singapore if you so much as say a word to Cho or any of the other guys in class. Got it? And on top of that, I'm gonna teach my pal Cho everything I know and he'll do this to you next time. Got it?"

He let go of the one he'd kicked off the side of the truck. He was crying and whimpering but nodded and said yes. The other boy actually rushed at X who spun and kicked him through the air to land six feet away. X gave him four more resounding slaps. The boy went into abject whimpering mode. "Have you got it, now? You're going to leave my buddy Cho alone, aren't you?"

"Yes! Yes!"

X dropped him to the sidewalk, carefully stepping around the spreading wet surface as the boy had pissed himself and walked back into the studio as though nothing had happened. The girls all clapped. X went straight to Cho at the barre.

He spoke very softly. "If you ever have any trouble with those guys, tell me."

Cho nodded before adding, "Hey, X? I'm your pal?"

X returned to fifth position at the barre. "Don't push it, Cho," he said as he started into more plies.

Everyone went back to what they were doing. The girls and boys were all at the barre. Plies and now more stretching. Out on the sidewalk, the teacher could see the two boys, each just as big as Xavier, getting uncertainly to their feet and then stumbling away out of sight. She sidled up to Xavier, now matching the girls in holding his foot in his hand straight overhead. First, she gave encouragement to the other boys. "A little more, Cho. You did that much yesterday . . . You too, Ian . . . Han . . Ling . . . just do the best you can.

"Xavier. I don't want you beating up boys who say something to other boys in the class. I'm glad that you're . . assertive. But I can't condone violence."

His expression didn't change. He didn't even blink. He just continued stretching, bringing his left foot down and then raising his right overhead as Tchaikovsky piano music continued to fill the studio. "I'll do what has to be done, ma'am," he said without turning toward her.

"Xavier! Did you have to do all that to those boys?"

She felt her already tenuous perception of control of the situation utterly evaporate with the carefree quality of his laugh in response. "Ma'am. One of the worst mistakes one can make in a fight is to inadequately beat up an opponent who needs to be taught a lesson."

She didn't know what to say and she didn't want to face the reality of just how little control she had over this boy. She backed away and heard him telling Cho to not cheat on his stretch for god's sake.

She thought about this incident all through the class. Here was a boy in tights who casually went out onto the sidewalk outside the studio. He didn't care who saw him or what anyone thought about him. It didn't matter. And her brief attempt to get him to tone down the violence meant absolutely nothing to him. He was going to do whatever he was going to do.

It occurred to her that maybe this was part of why all the girls said that the teachers at his school hated him even though he was at the top of the class. When you teach someone, whether it's ballet or english or science, you want a sense that you've left your mark on that student. Would you ever get that feeling with this boy?

At the end of that first class when he told her that he would be a ballet dancer, not that he hoped to be one but that he _would_ be one, he asked just what ballet companies there were in Singapore. There's the Singapore Dance Theater, she told him. Immediately he asked if they had a program for apprentice dancers. There's the Singapore Ballet Academy, she told him. It's associated with the Singapore Dance Theater and that's where promising students go. They have a boarding school there now. Students live there and take dancing classes and rehearse and also take normal academic classes.

"Oh, then that's where I'll be," he'd muttered before asking, "How does a dancer get invited to be a student there?"

She told him that it was a very uncertain process, that staff from the Academy sometimes attended productions put on by the various dance schools around Singapore and, very infrequently, would offer to let promising dancers attend.

He had calmly nodded and asked when their school's next production would be. In a month, she told him. They had just had one before the first class that he attended. A very pensive expression crossed his face. She was intrigued and waited.

"Ma'am. I want you to know that even though I'll be at the Singapore Ballet Academy in a month, I won't be leaving because of dissatisfaction with your teaching."

She was dumbfounded at the boy's certainty. She could only nod and then walk away. A month later he was proven right!

She'd had to help. She would have liked to have kept him there. Such a handsome slender boy! So fantastically athletic! And so well mannered. But she couldn't hold him back. It wouldn't be right. The school put on a show and he got to appear twice. Once was partnering Nur early in the show and the other was the last performance, a solo from an obscure ballet, the most athletic one she knew of, to show off what he could do. In between her usual frantic duties backstage at this production trying to check on a hundred things at once, this girl's costume, that boy's costume, giving dancers their cues to go on, last minute instructions and reminders to all of them, and cheering them on afterwards for their efforts she was able to find a few moments to look out past the curtains into the audience. She saw all the usual parents and some others she didn't recognize. And she also saw two officials from the Singapore Dance Theater.

As he performed, while he was partnering Nur, her eyes went back and forth from Xavier and Nur to the two officials. They were clearly impressed. She sniffed to herself. If they knew he'd never worn tights before a month ago they'd be even more impressed. Then there were some more brief pieces, all her little ballerinas and boys getting chances to be on stage. And the performance finished with Xavier. She watched the officials as much as she watched him. Their mouths dropped and they gaped. She knew she would not have Xavier as a student much longer.

Considering how the boy expected his performance to change the course of his life, she was surprised at his complete lack of nervousness before going on stage. But she had no idea how hard the boy had actually worked to get to that moment. After each ballet class, he went home . . . and he repeated the entire class, from memory, in his room wearing running pants and sneakers and in the courtyard out back of his apartment building, next to the dumpster. Then, when he went out for a walk late each night that month he would stop at one of a couple different office park parking lots and repeat the entire class again. She thought the boy had had 24 classes. Actually, he'd had 72. And she had seen him dance this particular solo three times in class. She didn't know he'd practiced it 12 more times on his own

The performance was at a studio space a few blocks away from Mrs. Rousseau-Nguyen's school. It was a slightly larger space with a raised stage. But it was still too small for a boy who jumped as far and spun as fast as Xavier Li. When it came time for his solo, he came within inches of disaster multiple times. On his final series of leaps around the stage, his right foot almost hit the curtain on the left side of the stage six feet up. His left foot almost hit the cheesy plastic background leaning against the back wall. Then his right foot almost hit Cho in the face where he was watching in the wings and when he finally landed at the front of the undersized stage, he slid till the toes of one slipper went over the edge, but only his toes. A boy who wasn't meant to be a ballet dancer might have had one of these things go wrong for him. But X finished with a grin and one arm thrown overhead in a grand gesture and the audience burst into applause.

Afterward, Mrs. Rousseau-Nguyen said a few words to thank the audience and to congratulate all the dancers for their performances. Then the parents came forward out of their chairs and X found himself shaking the hand of nearly every one of the other students' parents. Finally, his mother was there beside him and two men he hadn't seen before approached him. One was a shorter, chinese man with a full head of white hair. The other was english and the same height as X with just a few remaining whisps of what must have been red hair years ago. They both spoke softly saying how pleased they were with his performance and handed him their business cards. Mr. Gang and Mr. Collins. They said he should show up at their office two days hence at 9 a.m.

X hadn't needed to see their cards. He'd known as soon as they approached that they must be from the Singapore Ballet Academy. His mother asked who they were. X told her. He handed her the cards. She looked at them. X saw a mischievous expression cross her face.

"Mom?"

"We have to prepare to negotiate, Xavier. Hao's uncle, do you have his phone number?"

"Hao's uncle, Mom?" X was lost. "Why . . ? I-I don't think so, but I can get it from Hao."

His mother nodded. Right now.

Two days later, X put on his good suit. It had just been to the tailor to adjust to his latest growth spurt a couple weeks before. He was starting to work a tie under his collar when his mother grabbed one end of it and tugged to stop him.

"No, Xavier," she said with a pensive expression as if still thinking it through. "You should look your best but you should be just a little less than completely formal. Completely formal has overtones of deference. This will be a negotiation. You can't be deferential in a negotiation."

X shrugged. He threw his tie on his bed. His mom wore one of her good dresses but not her best one. They took a cab to 51 Waterloo Street three miles away. X could have driven it for the cabbie. He'd walked past that address with its impressive looking granite block exterior in his late night travels a couple times.

Once inside, they checked in with the security guy behind the desk just inside the door.

"Xiu and Xavier Li to see Mr. Gang," his mother had said, not deferential just businesslike. X adopted a casual expression that matched her tone of voice. No big deal. While inside, he was all wound up. This was one of the crucial steps in his life!

The security man had them wait at a leather seating area flanking the entrance on the other side of his desk. X noted the time on his expensive watch. He and his mother were five minutes early. Perfect.

Forty five minutes later they were still sitting there. X had ping ponged back and forth between anxious and angry. Finally, they heard the phone buzz on the security guy's desk and saw him pick up and look at them as he listened. His mother waited till they were in the elevator to turn to him.

"Take a deep breath and relax yourself, Xavier. Sometimes people make you wait to get you anxious and to reinforce the idea that they're the important ones, that you should defer to them. But they want you just as much as you want to be here. Let me negotiate for you and I'll get you everything you deserve. And remember. You have to be willing to walk out of the negotiation or you won't get everything you should get."

X nodded. When the elevator got up to the floor with the offices, X lingered over the sight of studio spaces that could be seen from high windows opening onto their hallway. The studios were huge and beautiful. He couldn't help but imagine himself down there leaping and spinning and enjoying himself surrounded by beautiful girls. That was his future down there! His mother saw his look of excitement. She stopped him and spoke quietly but as insistently as he'd ever heard her.

"Xavier! This is a negotiation."

X nodded, turning away from the gorgeous studio and focusing on the task at hand.

They proceeded down the hall to a large office from which light spilled into the hallway. Beyond an initial room they could see a large desk and that short, white haired man from the performance seated behind it with english guy standing to one side of him and another, taller, younger chinese man standing to the other side. All three gave condescending smiles. You took the upper hand with these artistic boys and girls. They didn't have the temperment to go through a long negotiation. They were all proud of what a disinterested front they were presenting and to a boy who they simply had to have at their academy. They had to have this boy. There were almost no boys dancing ballet in Singapore. And this boy was strikingly handsome and could leap and spin like no boy they'd seen before.

"Come in, Xavier. Come in, Mrs. Li," said the seated man in a perfunctory fashion betraying no enthusiasm. He motioned to two low seats opposite the desk. As X and his mother sat down in the oddly low seats. X glanced at his mother. Seeing her adopt a stony, non-committal expression, he did likewise.

There was an extended pause between the two sides. And then it went on. And then it went on farther. The two sides spend two full minutes just staring at each other, neither willing to go first and show that they were more interested.

Finally, the short, white haired man at the desk, Mr. Gang, spoke up. "Well, you've come here to ask about a position at the Academy for young Xavier, is that it?"

"Actually, you invited us here," corrected Mrs. Li.

There was another extended pause between the two sides. It went on. And on. And on.

"Um, yes, be that as it may," the short man finally continued, "We feel that Xavier has some promise. He's very athletic-"

"And quite handsome," interjected the English guy, "extremely well suited to ballet."

"-but he still lacks polish," declared the seated man with a wave of his hand as if this ended any consideration of Xavier Li's ability.

"Polish is very important in ballet," added the younger Chinese man standing beside the desk.

"-So we're taking a big risk in offering to take Xavier on at all. Nevertheless, we recognize the chance that he'll fulfill his promise and so we are prepared to offer him a one quarter scholarship to attend Singapore Ballet Academy."

He finished with a slight smile and a gesture of turning his hand over so that his palm was up, a gesture of regal generosity.

Xavier felt his mother's finger poke him hard at his hip. He jumped to his feet. "No way!" he said taking a stride toward the door. Now, his mother grabbed at his pant leg.

"Xavier, come back here!"

"But, Mom! One quarter?!"

She tugged at his pant leg again and directed him to sit back down.

"Xavier!"

She looked to the men behind the desk, a mother struggling with her impetuous son. "He has such an artistic temperment," she sighed as she simultaneously removed a card from her purse. She held it out so that the men could better see it. It was something she'd had made up for her. Hao's uncle worked at a printing shop. At her direction, he took the picture at the home page of the Hong Kong Ballet's web site and added some information to it supplied by Mrs. Li and printed a handful of fake business cards for her.

"He had such a nice talk with Mr. Jing about attending Hong Kong Ballet's new company school."

She held the card out enough for them to see but she didn't hand it to them. Most of all, they got to see the Hong Kong Ballet's picture from the front page of its web site, a ballerina en pointe in the middle of a city street, and its slogan, "Asia's Premier Ballet Company". She could almost tell when each man read the slogan by when each seemed to grit his teeth.

Singapore and Hong Kong were rivals in everything. Commerce, sports, culture, the arts. Now, the red flag had been waved in front of the bull. She pulled the card back but kept it visible to them in one hand. She saw them intermittently glance at it.

"Mr. Jing said I'm gonna be a star Mom. They weren't talking about any measly one quarter scholarship, either! He said-"

Mrs. Li put one hand in front of Xavier. He abruptly quieted. She turned to the three men and said nothing but only raised on eyebrow. Well, gentlemen?

She waited.

And she waited.

And she waited.

They sighed and swallowed and finally cracked. The younger man on the right turned to the seated man. He whispered but X could hear what he said. "Kuh! We need this boy!" At the same time, the effeminate British man gave the man at the desk an imploring look.

"Allright," the seated man proclaimed with another attempt at regal generosity. "We'll give Xavier a half scholarship."

Xavier said nothing. He joined his mother in giving these men a stony stare. The idols on Easter Island showed more change of expression than the Li's. They waited. And they waited.

The seated man sputtered something angrily under his breath. It had never gone like this before. The boys and girls always understood their subservient position. This damned woman. They tried waiting longer but the woman and the boy may as well have been statues.

The three men cracked again. The British man sighed. "Kuh!" he pleaded leaning down toward the man in the chair. "This is rather a special case. With this boy's ability . . "

The man at the desk wiped his brow. He turned to Xavier. Anything to avoid the piercing stare of this woman. "Young man," he began, "It's almost unprecedented for us to bestow a full scholarship on a student and we've never given one to a student with so little dancing experience but we-we'll give you a full scholarship to attend our ballet academy boarding school."

He finished with a sigh. Fine. That was over. Now let's talk about . .

But neither the mother nor the boy had changed expressions. He groaned in exasperation. "What?! How is that not sufficient?"

"My son and I live very modestly," said Mrs. Li very slowly not in a tone of seeking empathy but very flatly. It was just an excuse to stare them down again. "The expense of books and his ballet clothes is significant for me. Xavier doesn't have to pay for his books at Eunos Primary but he will at your boarding school. And he'll have ongoing expenses for his tights and slippers and . . other ballet clothes."

She said nothing more but stared at them. She could see the seated man seem to say no. No! That's too far. But she stared and stared. This confounded woman was impossible. And he could see in her hand the card from the executive at Hong Kong Ballet. That bastard Jing! Asia's Premier Ballet Company! How dare they?!

They couldn't lose this amazing boy to them. Not this one! Not such a strikingly handsome boy from Singapore who can practically leap out of the studio!

"Fine! Fine!" he barked. "We'll give Xavier a stipend for the costs of his books and all his ballet outfits and workout clothes. 500-," he looked at the damn woman's unchanging expression. "Allright, 600 dollars per semester. Is that all?"

"As I said, my son and I live very modestly. We do so because we must. I have my job and I get a very small pension benefit as the widow of a policeman. For the last few years, Xavier has been working odd jobs to provide himself and me with money and to allow us to help out his grandparents. If Xavier is completely devoted to his ballet he won't be able to work those small jobs and provide me and his grandparents with money."

She stopped there and stared at them.

The man behind the desk looked at her then at the other two men trying to find help somewhere. But they had been just as crushed as him. "You want us to . . ? We should just . . give Xavier more money?! No! No! I don't care what an athlete your boy is. No! I don't care what he looks like. We won't do it!"

He tried to stare her down. He wasn't going to give everything away to this woman, not everything, no matter how high her boy could jump! No!

It was an explicit staring contest between the two of them but each second that it went on she was slowly moving the card apparently from the Hong Kong Ballet closer to her face.

At last the man turned away and slammed his fist down on the desk in anger. "Fine!" he practically spit at one corner of his desk. "Another 600 dollars a semester for Xavier!" He looked to the evil woman his eyes pleading now.

She gave him a serene smile of regal generosity. "That will be sufficient."

They expected her to leave right then but she insisted that they at least write down these terms on paper and all three sign it. She signed as well and they sent the english man into the next room to make copies of it for everyone. Now, they were effusive in praising her son's abilities. X spoke very little other than to promise them that he would give it everything he had.

X waited till they were in the elevator on the way out to hug his mother. "You were great, Mom!" he said before giving her a kiss on the cheek. She hugged him back and kissed his cheek. He hadn't seen such a big smile from her since Pop's passing.

X immediately dropped out of Eunos Primary School. He showed up one last time at the start of the day and only went to the principal's office to inform them that he wouldn't be back. That afternoon he gathered all his stuff in a couple large boxes and made his way over to the Singapore Ballet Academy. There were 24 girls living in 12 rooms on the third floor and 23 other boys living in 12 rooms on the fourth floor.

X was assigned to a room with Angel Santos, a short Filipino boy with dark curly hair. Their room, like all the others, was small with minimal furnishings but to X it didn't matter. It represented a new life. It represented his future. All the other boys and girls came around to meet the new boy. X thought several of the girls were nothing short of beautiful. He didn't quite understand why but Nur had broken up with him. It was almost like a fit of pique or something. He didn't get it. But. fine. He'd get over it.

He lay down to sleep in his little twin bed that night with a big grin. My new life!

It was what he was meant for. But not everyone wanted it for him.

Officer Chen had had a flash of inspiration. He used to have them all the time back when he was a detective. He'd been a rising star of the Singapore Police Department just a few years earlier. But he'd been aggressive and arrested a City official before everything was lined up to clinch the case against that guy. He hadn't called in the press. He never did that. Someone else at the SPD had. The City official had ended up doing a perp walk, getting his picture splashed all over the Straits Times being led out of the building in handcuffs. But one witness suddenly disappeared and the case against that particular official weakened to the point that it was dropped. Oh, he was still guilty and everyone knew it. The old Chen intuition had been right again. But he got away. And, somehow, the thing that stuck with the official to the exclusion of almost everything else was the perp walk. And he blamed Chen.

Detective Chen became Officer Chen assigned to walk a beat in the Geylang district. But he still had all his old instincts. It came to him in an instant. Like every other man and woman in the Singapore Police Department, he'd seen the three or four brief clips of footage of The Acrobat many times over. The case bedeviled the Department. A couple times a year the home or condo of some super rich guy running one of the banks would get robbed. And the public loved reading about it. And the Department had nothing. They had those few clips, a figure clad in black climbing up the Standard Bank Tower with amazing ease, a black clad figure jumping down from the second floor balcony of another tower as he was completing that job and a few other bits of terrible, grainy footage.

The Department wasn't any closer to apprehending The Acrobat than when they started. Chen put it all together. He had figured out by now that the boy he'd chased and who had gotten away by making an incredible leap up a high fence was Xavier Li. And he'd seen the Li boy casually jump down from the second floor landing outside the And Soon Thong gang headquarters. And then one of the boys he regularly squeezed for information on the street mentioned in passing about Xavier Li becoming a ballet dancer. All of a sudden all the pieces snapped into place. The way The Acrobat moved, the quality of it suggested extreme grace. Of course!

Chen called The Acrobat task force together for a meeting. There were two police captains, that bent Lieutenant Ling, a couple sergeants and a secretary in the cluttered room. Chen was excited. This-this would catapult him back into the detective ranks. No more walking a beat in the shitty Geylang district. He would be a detective again. They would have to make him a detective again for breaking this case.

He started off by announcing that he'd cracked The Acrobat case. No preliminaries just right into it. The other six present picked up on his energy. Who? Who is it?

Chen put a thin folder down on the table and took out a blown up version of Xavier Li's 8th grade school picture. "This is the boy," said a triumphant Chen. "Xavier Li."

But it didn't go at all how he'd expected. Instead of getting to explain how he'd figured it out, how he'd seen the same grace in the boy as in The Acrobat, the same pleasure in using it, they kept interrupting. And they couldn't get past his age.

"Wait. A boy? How old is this kid?"

"He's . . fourteen now but that doesn't-"  
"What?! Chen! The Acrobat's been pulling jobs for four years now!"

"You think this kid was pulling of complex heists when he was 10 years old?!"

Laughter filled the room, except, Chen noticed for Lieutenant Ling whose expression went from puzzled to some sort of denial.

One of the captains was particularly dismissive. "God, Chen. I didn't think it was fair that you got busted down to a beat in Geylang but what the fuck?! A ten year old boy?!"

The others guffawed at him as well. They started making jokes now. Chen was furious. "You don't understand the mistake that you're making," he half shouted over their stupid remarks. "This is a very unusual boy. And now he's going to have access to the upper levels of Singapore society. He has to be stopped before-"

"Wait, how is that?" asked one of the sergeants through a bemused grin.

"They've given him a position at the Singapore Ballet Academy and he'll-"

"You're practically terrified of some sissy boy in tights?!" laughed one of the captains and the whole room exploded in laughter.

"How -haha- how did he find time to pull these jobs with the time demands of being dainty and pretty?" laughed a captain before twirling around the room.

"You don't understand!" snapped Chen. "This boy's an incredible athlete. I chased him for two miles before he got away leaping up and over a 12 foot fence."

"Why were you chasing him?" asked the secretary.

"He-he'd stolen my hat. It's a sort of gang initiation thing. Then he pissed on it. Right in front of me."

"I thought you guys couldn't do it if someone was watching," snickered the secretary.

"That Li boy has nothing to worry about if anyone is watching," muttered Chen. To his consternation the others all heard it and went into new bouts of jokes all of them except for Ling whom Chen despised for his reputation as a cop on the take. But Ling wouldn't hear him out either.

Finally, one of the captains stepped forward and spread his arms out wide. "I've got a lot of respect for you, Chen. And because of that, this is not going to leave this room. Understand?!" He looked all the others in the eye and they started filing out. The captain looked at Chen with a shake of his head a the doorway. "A 10 year old boy for that armored car job, Chen? Seriously?"

"It-it was a timing job. I figured out that he walked home from school that way every day. He-!"

The captain quieted him with a pat on the shoulder and a soft call of his name as admonishment. "Chen."

The others drifted away smiling, all except for Lieutenant Ling.


	13. Xavier Li, ballet dancer -- part III

X had no trouble with the transition to being a student at the Singapore Ballet Academy. It was a cushy life. The building had an awesome central air conditioning and dehumidifier system. This was a big deal in a city like Singapore that was barely north of the equator with daytime high temperatures that varied from 86 degrees fahrenheit in "winter" to 90 degrees in summer while humidity averaged 80% year round. The ballet academy was kept in a glorious cool and dry condition befitting the special status of its budding artists.

X shared a room there with a small Filipino boy, Angel Santos. He was too short to be a star but he was a pretty good dancer and a happy go lucky sort of boy. He and X quickly become good friends. The day would start with the sounding of a bell at 7 a.m. on the 4th floor at 51 Waterloo Street to get all the boys up. They presumed that a bell also sounded on the 3rd floor where the girls' rooms were.

Boys would wash up in the bathroom down the hall and then go down to the small cafeteria on the first floor. Starting at 7:30, breakfast would be served and for an hour, X would eat breakfast and socialize with the other boys and the girls, but mostly the girls. They had such beautiful ballerinas at the Singapore Ballet Academy. There was lovely Yeo who had such incredibly long legs. There was Niki who had hair that was positively lustrous. It shined like no other girl's. And she had such a good sense of humor. There was also Ma and Mai and Sun and the others. Lovely faces and beautiful slender figures all. Ahhhhh.

Then, from 8:30 to 10 the boys and girls would all go to one of the huge, sun drenched studios on the second floor that overlooked Waterloo Street below. They would stretch and do barre work and practice some steps but nothing too rigorous. Then from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. they would have regular academic classes in four small rooms on the first floor, never mixing the boys and the girls, always two classes of boys and two classes of girls, more and less academically advanced of each.

After a week of it, X wanted to laugh. The classes were easy compared to Eunos Primary. Homework was minimal. It was like a dream compared to the day after day torrent of homework doled out at Eunos. X came to realize that the academic instruction for the dancers was just a formality, that the Academy regarded its mission as teaching him ballet and not books. And he was fine with that. He'd teach himself everything he really needed to know or find the people who could.

Then, each day, from 2 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. they had a long ballet class full of instruction and not just the warm up, stretching and barre work that constituted most of the morning dance class.

Another thing X quickly realized was just how competitive the ballet academy was. The very first time he walked into the Academy's beautiful studios, he could see it in the looks, the almost teeth bared expressions, of some of the other boys. X warmed up with everyone else, did his barre work and before the instructors set everyone to doing any particular steps, X launched into the fastest pirouette he could manage transitioning seamlessly out of it into a series of leaps around two sides of the giant studio finishing with a perfect landing and bravura hand gesture. The ballerinas all clapped. So did Angel Santos and a couple of the boys.

But two of the boys in particular, a blond, English boy named Cyril and a Chinese boy, named Zhao, did not clap. They did not even smile. They regarded themselves as being the top boys in the academy. Suddenly, here was this tall, slender, extremely good looking, incredibly athletic rival dropped into their environment. They did not like it. They did not like it at all.

X knew that he was behind all the other boys in terms of technical polish. Ballets are supposed to be danced exactly a certain way. Every part of each dancer was supposed to be exactly a certain way. The angle of a dancer's front foot on his leap, the angle of his back foot, the angle of his calves and his thighs, the precise tilt of his upper body the line formed by each of his arms, his hands whether they were clenched, open or pointing, the angle of his head and neck inclined straight up or looking at someone else on stage, the expression on his face. And there was a general attitude or emotion that each character was supposed to be projecting. This had to be correctly represented too, not just a certain general body alignment. There were dozens of possible complications to how every simple looking leap was supposed to be executed. X had athletic ability and flexibility that the other boys could never match. But he'd only danced ballet a month. Some of the other boys had been in ballet classes for 10 years and by rote muscle memory did certain things the way it was expected a dancer would.

In X's first weeks at the Academy, the instructors held nothing back in critiquing his dancing. Every class he was corrected several times in front of all the others. He was the recipient of more negative comments than all the other boys and girls combined. Part of it was his lack of polish but part of it was also to make sure the new boy didn't get too full of himself. And the instructors saw that the new boy could take it. He didn't fall apart because he was criticized. He only worked to correct his dancing. It didn't negatively affect him. But, in a studio surrounded by mirrors it wasn't hard to see that this criticism was actually positively greeted by others, the smirks on the faces of Cyril and Zhao were noticeable each time he was corrected.

"Don't lean like that, Mr. Li!"

"Hips more forward on that pirouette, Li!"

"Arms out wider Li!"

"Are you supposed to be a swan there, Mr. Li? Why would a prince have such loose carriage Mr. Li?"

After one afternoon class in which X had received several shouted corrections from the instructors, Zhao remarked loud enough for X and everyone else to hear "You can always tell the guys who started dancing too late. They never dance their parts clean. They always make too many mistakes."

X glared at him but said nothing. Winning was the best revenge. He needed to get better not beat Zhao's sorry ass.

The one thing he was almost never corrected on was his partnering. The instructors were amazed at how strong the slender Li boy was. And he had an almost magically smooth touch with the ballerinas. They all loved dancing with the new boy.

As he had promised, he found one day a week to go back to Mrs. Rousseau-Nguyen's school and take her class. He would attend the one after dinner that started at 7 p.m. She asked him how things were going at the Academy. He only sighed and told her that he still had a lot to learn. He didn't want to say something that implied that she hadn't taught him enough. She'd done everything she could for him and he was properly grateful. It had only been a month and she'd got him to the point where the Academy gave him a full scholarship. He had no complaints.

Neither did she. Her school was more successful than ever. And then it got even better.

A month after X had gone to the Academy, she got a letter in the mail. It was from some outfit called "Acrobat Ventures LLC". She couldn't quite believe it. This company was offering her $250,000 for 49% of her company. There was a check in the envelope. $250,000 payable to the little company that she had formed to own the dance studio. She laughed. Why would anyone want to buy half her dance school? She didn't own the building. She leased the studio space. She didn't make any money. There were no profits. It was more a calling than a business. She made her official salary, which was nothing special, and nothing more.

She didn't know quite what to think. It couldn't possibly be real. But it seemed to be. The check looked like a real check. She brought the letter and contract and check home and showed them to her businessman husband who was also perplexed. He looked into this "Acrobat Ventures, LLC" company but couldn't seem to get to the bottom of it. It might be partially owned by any of 10 different holding companies. It was such a complex web.

The next day, she went down to her school and met the owner of the martial arts studio next door. The dojo took up half of the first floor of the building. She had the left side. The dojo had the right side. He was walking out the door with an armful of the posters that she had always seen on his walls under his arm as he locked the door.

She didn't really like the man but was friendly enough with him to say hello. She said hi. The man wished her luck with all of it. She asked what he meant. He dug a letter out of his pocket. He explained to her that he'd been bought out of his lease.

"Fools paid me more than they had to," he snickered.

"Who?" she demanded.

"Your partners," he said, surprised at her ignorance. He read the name off the document. "Acrobat Ventures, LLC". "The letter says they're buying it to expand the dance studio."

She grabbed the letter from him and read it for herself. She said a befuddled goodbye to him then went into her studio and took the $250,000 check out of her purse. She inspected it anew. It looked real. She called her husband at his office and told him about the dojo being bought out. They agreed. What the hell. Try it. She went from there to the bank and cashed the check, depositing it in the school's account. Her husband looked over the simple contract again. There was nothing to it. $250,000 for 49% of the ballet school, period. They had their lawyer look over it and he gave his blessing. "I don't know why it's happening, Suzanne. They're not getting control. You'll run the dance school just the same as you do now. You don't make a profit and I'll back you up on that if these Acrobat Ventures people complain that you do. So, as near as anyone can tell, they're giving you $250,000 for nothing."

She signed the contract and sent it back. She wondered if something would change, somehow. Two days later, workers showed up to tear down the wall between the dance studio and the space that had been used by the dojo. Within two more weeks the dojo space had had a brand new bouncy hardwood floor installed, mirrors on every wall and ballet barres on most of the walls. She finally had the full size studio she'd always wanted.

The day the work was finished she was stopped at a traffic light and saw a sign advertising her dance school at busy intersection beside a soccer field. She looked right past it at first then did a double take. What?! She didn't have a budget for any advertising. She sat there transfixed till the cars behind her started beeping. An ad for the school?! She parked as close by as she could and walked over to look at it. It had a silhouette of boy and girl dancers and neat professional lettering inviting boys and girls to Madame Rousseau's Dance Studio with the address, email address and phone number and then, in tiny print invisible unless you were standing two feet from it as she was, it said "Acrobat Ventures, LLC".

Even with double the space now, the studio was filling up. Xavier Li still showed up at least once a week for evening classes and he was a charismatic presence. The boys and girls all loved him. She was quite enjoying herself one evening. The students were on their best behavior and working hard. She was smiling in satisfaction at the whole studio and saw Xavier Li smiling at her.

A light went on. She walked right up to him. It was not that he was smiling. It was the way he was smiling. There was something in it, sympathy for her or something like it that you didn't expect from a student. He was happy for her. It suddenly occurred to her. She remembered all the wild rumors about him. That wallet full of thousands of dollars!

"Xavier. Tell me about Acrobat Ventures, LLC."

"I'm sorry, ma'am. What?"

"Xavier!" she lowered her voice but spoke more insistently through clenched teeth. "Tell me about Acrobat Ventures, LLC."

He looked her right in the eyes. "Ma'am. I don't know what you're talking about."

She pursued the matter further but he convinced her that he'd never heard of the company. Still . . .

But he hadn't. He'd met Park a couple weeks before. There were a couple different matters to go over. X had been given a ridiculously thorough physical his first day at the Singapore Ballet Academy. He seriously doubted that the was any necessity for the doctor to push and prod and grope him all over like that, or jam his latex gloved finger up . . . was there? But X had put up with it all. Then, at the end of it, the doctor took a blood sample and had X press his fingertips onto an ink pad and give a set of fingerprints.

X had tried to avoid it. He didn't want information about him in this or any other system. He didn't intend on leaving blood or fingerprints behind at any job but if it somehow happened he didn't want it to be traced to him. "Is this really necessary?" he asked the doctor as he was pressing the tips of X's long fingers onto an ink pad. "I thought I had heard that they did these things electronically now, anyway," he added as the doctor started pressing his blue stained finger onto paper.

"You get a better print from this," said the doctor. "We put it in the computer anyway so then we can send it over to Singapore PD if need be. As to why, well, it was before your time but 7 or 8 years ago, some crazy guy kidnapped a girl from here. Since then they have all the girls and the boys, too, printed. A pretty pretty boy like you?! You?! There's some crazies out there who'd want to get their hands on you and make you their sex toy all night long whether you want it or not. A boy as pretty as you?! Are you kidding? Somebody'll slip you a drink with a roofie and you'll wake up the next morning tied to a bed in a hotel room after having 10 guys violate you all night long."

X rolled his eyes. The doc's enthusiasm for describing these scenarios was creepy. Besides, he wasn't going to let anyone take advantage of him. So he wasn't going to get anything out of this fingerprint and blood work.

Or . . . was he?

Thinking about it walking away from the examination room, X realized that this wasn't just a problem. It was also an opportunity. That night, from his side of the room, while talking to his new roommate Santos about all the usual introduction stuff, where are you from, when'd you start dancing, etc . . , he was also hacking the Academy's computer system. Its defenses were pretty minimal. X saw where the blood and fingerprint information was going to go. He could also see all the information of the other boys and girls. He zoomed in on Cyril Underwood's fingerprints. Oh yes. Cyril's. He looked around the rest of the site and found all the accounting information for the Academy and the Singapore Dance Theatre. In there was all the information about donors, all the records of when this or that super rich man or woman had given how much money to the Academy or the Singapore Dance Theatre. X had heard of a couple of the names but not most of them. He suspected that it would be like a who's who list of all the ultra rich of Singapore. And he knew just who would have inside info on every one of them.

The next day he checked the web site again and found that his blood and fingerprint info had just been uploaded. He looked at the info of the other boys. Perfect! Cyril had the same blood type as him. X deftly moved Cyril's info to his name and put his next to Cyril's. It would almost be fun to leave a fingerprint at a job now, to imagine the cops dragging that bitch Cyril to the station house and him collapsing and crying under police questioning. Maybe they'd cane his flat ass just to try to make him talk.

He printed out the donor's list in his room, with Santos down the hall, and then went out to a pay phone. Students weren't supposed to leave the building without an approved reason. There was a guard 24/7 at the entrance to the building. Officially this was to keep intruders out. Unofficially, the students all felt that the staff wanted to keep them in except for officially approved trips out. It wasn't that the staff quite locked them up. They could all go out to eat dinner at a restaurant instead of in the cafeteria. They could all go to see a performance of the Singapore Dance Theatre or a concert or visit their parents or a friend. Students just basically couldn't decide to go out on the spur of the moment for no specific purpose.

X couldn't say that he wanted to call his new super fence pal and he didn't want to get caught up in having given a false reason that might later trip him up. But X had opened the window to his and Santos's room the first night that he was there. You didn't much open windows in always hot and steamy Singapore if you had a fantastic central air system like they had at the Academy. But X was able to get the window open and he could see that the granite block looking exterior of the building with creases an inch deep between all the blocks was something he could easily climb.

He told Santos he was going out, climbed out the window, closed it behind him and climbed down from the 4th floor. He made his way to a pay phone and called Park's number. He got Park but his new pal was in Taiwan at that moment. They agreed to meet at the same expensive French restaurant, Les Amis, as they had previously, in four days.

So, four days later he climbed down from his fourth floor window and hailed a cab that he took to Les Amis, just north of Orchard Road. He walked in with his printouts of the major donors to the Singapore Dance Theater and the ballet academy. He was just approaching the maitre d' when he saw Park, in an impeccable light gray suit, as usual, seated at that same navy blue leather corner booth as before waving to him. "I'm here to see Monsieur Park," he whispered to the maitre d then proceeded past him to the corner of the restaurant.

After a quick greeting from each, X went right into it. He told Park that he needed a couple favors from him. Park just raised an eyebrow. Shoot.

X explained that he wanted to help out the teacher at the ballet school. But, he told Park, she's a very proud woman and she wouldn't accept it if he just showed up and gave her a bag of money. And there would be too many questions. How does a 14 year old have all this money to give her? And X added that he wanted to buy out the lease of the dojo that shares the first floor of the building and expand her studio. "I heard her say that that's what she'd always hoped to do. I want to make it happen, Park, but I'm not sure how to do it."

Park smiled and gave a knowing nod. "You came to the right place, miyou. Does she own that ballet school as part of a company?"

X squinted a moment trying to recall. "Wait . . yeah. Yeah, she does! I once saw some letterhead paper on her desk saying 'Rousseau Dance School, Inc."

Park sniffed. "Then it's easy. We make a company that holds some of your assets. That company offers to buy just under half her dance school company for however much money you want to give her. Something like that never makes money. She still has control. There are no actual profits to split in half. Presto. Legally blessed gift."

"Okay. Don't tell me the company's name for a month or two. She might ask me and I want to be able to truthfully say that I don't know anything about company X."

Park shrugged. "Whatever you want. Now, what's all that?" he asked tilting his head toward X's printed list of donors in one hand. Before X could answer, a sommelier arrived with a bottle of champagne that he presented to Park for a nod of approval then opened and presented its cork to Park in a deferential fashion. The 15 year old Korean born boy sniffed it then nodded his approval. "Excellent choice, Maurice," he said and smoothly inserted a 50 dollar bill in his shirt pocket. The sommelier poured two glasses of champagne and bowed as he backpedaled away from them.

X explained the donor list to Park. It had names, addresses and amounts donated. The addresses would let him find all these people. But he asked Park for his help in figuring out whom he should target. For the next two hours, through appetizers, two coqs au vin, and rich desserts, X got Park's opinion of over 200 donors who'd given $10,000 or more to either the Singapore Dance Theatre or the Singapore Ballet Academy.

X was tremendously impressed with Park's encyclopedic knowledge of the rich people of Singapore. Some names Park dismissed quickly with just a word or two. About others he went on at length. When it was all over, X knew just whom The Acrobat would be going after.

X flipped to the last page. " . . . Okay . . . next guy is Lee Kwok."

Park's brow furrowed. "The one who lives on Orchard Road? A building in the low 70's?"

"Yeah, 73 Orchard."

Park shook his head. "Small fry. He or his wife must really like ballet for him to give enough to get on the list. Started as a doctor or dentist and went into real estate. He's harmless, anyway."

"What about this guy, Poh? He seems to have given a lot to the ballet," said X reading off the next name. "Chua Thian Poh?"

Park scrunched up his features and shook his head. "Nah. He's aggressive but legit. I don't like him but he's not a crook, or worse, a banker crook."

"What about . . the . . . family trust of Ho Sim Guan?"

"Yeah, Guan," snickered Park, "as in guano, as in shit. That's one for you. They've been in bed with HSBC and JP Morgan for decades."

X circled that one in red. He continued. "Lee Seng Wee?"

"Nah, old guy and a straight arrow. Put local banks together to go up against the ones you want to get. There are a lotta straight arrows in Singapore. It ain't like Hong Kong, Mumbai or Taipei."

"Alright. Then . . . how about Michael Lien? Isn't his family banking money, too?"

Park laughed. "Oh yeah. My dad says there are loan shark businesses who treat their customers better than Lien does. He's got a nasty rep."

X circled that name. "What about the Khoo's?"

"Oh yeah," chuckled Park. "The Khoo family Are you kidding? Big time. They're targets for you. My dad says they've been wired into the top of British banking since the 80's."

"How 'bout . . Christina Ong?"

Park rolled his eyes. "I don't like her but she's not really corrupt."

X quickly took a bite of his mille-feuille dessert that Park had suggested to him. It was awesome. He scrolled back down through the names. "Okay, how about . . . Peter Lim?"

Park dithered. "Hmmph. Investments guy. He's kind of gone back and forth between being straight and being bent. But now he's sort of wired into the circle of the bankers you want to get, so, yeah, include him. I don't think he's a primary target but he wouldn't be a guy to leave alone."

"Okay. Last one. What about . . . Wee Cho Yaw?"

"No. Don't touch him. He's the competition on the legit side for all the crooked banks you want to get. He started back in the freaking 1930's. My dad respects him. Leave him alone."

X raised his hands in a surrender gesture to show that he would acquiesce. But he could not help asking, "How the hell do you know so much about all these people?"

Park laughed. "What do you think I do in the office all day? Just because you only saw me sitting in the chair saying nothing just watching you do you think that's what I did all day? My dad teaches me his business. And his business includes knowing the lay of the land. We do legit stuff, too like that apartment complex where you jumped over its fence then pissed on that cop's hat right in front of him." Park broke into more laughter then went on. "Some of those names, not many, but more than you'd think, we've done our main business with. The others my dad kept track of for legit stuff."

"Do you mind my asking, what kinds of legit things do you get into?"

Park shrugged. "Some commodities, a few other things but mostly real estate. It's the biggest legit scam out there," said Park nodding toward X's list of donors. "More people on that list got rich in real estate than anything else."

"Why's it a scam?"

Park sighed. "It's not . . necessarily a scam but people get themselves fleeced over and over in the same pattern."

X raised an eyebrow. How?

Park pointed to a nearby table. "See that souffle? That's a good analogy for a real estate market. It-"

X looked at that table, puzzled. "Which thing is the souffle?"

Park sighed and leaned back on the leather booth. "I forgot. For all your occasional bursts of sophistication, you're nearly a savage."

X laughed. "Come on!"

"Grew up wearing only a loin cloth and throwing spears at wild game along Sims Avenue," continued Park. "And to think they want to try to make an artist out of a beast like you! It was a perfect analogy but because you're so ignorant I'm going to have to dumb it all down."

X grinned.

"Okay," smiled Park. "Look. If real estate just went up at a slow, steady clip, there wouldn't be the huge opportunities to make money that there are. But it doesn't because people act irrationally. They love confirmed price momentum but they're intellectual chickens afraid to think and see it starting." He stopped to take another forkful of his mille-feuille. "Mmm. So, because they're afraid to think and judge for themselves they all want to jump in once prices are clearly already taking off. But they're also greedy and afraid to get out, which is even dumber. You can show them a ream of fucking data to prove that the real estate market's about to drop and that they should get out now and take this much profit."

Park held one hand a foot above the table and took another bite of his mille-feuille then a gulp of champagne. "But they worry that somehow they'll miss out on the price going up this high," said Park raising his hand to 18 inches over the table. "The really stupid thing is that if it did they _still_ wouldn't get out. They have no plan to get out. None!" He shook his head in disgust.

"There was a guy in Taipei, seven years ago. My Dad liked him so he sat him down and he told him. 'Charlie! Get the fuck out of the real estate market now.' But the guy didn't and he got crushed. My dad ended up buying most of his stuff for 50 cents on the dollar. He sold it all last year and we cleaned up!"

"You sat in a chair in the corner as a, what, 8 year old boy, watching the whole thing? In a beautiful suit, of course," said X touching the lapel of Park's ultra expensive suit jacket.

Park nodded. Of course. "I wasn't some freaking savage boy with a bone through his nose and a painted face running between the bushes and bamboo trees on Sims Avenue hoping to sling a rock at a bird or something for dinner."

X gave a hearty laugh. "So, you play the cycles of the real estate market for profit."

"Basically, yeah. That apartment complex that you soiled by pissing in a courtyard area?"

X chuckled.

"My dad figures its value will peak in about two years. The real estate market in Singapore's got about 18 months or two years more safe momentum. Then it gets a bit sketchy. It might go 10% or 20% higher for a year or so after that but you risk getting killed staying in too long. We'll take our chips off the table in a year or so, cash out of the casino and watch all the chumps try to fill inside straights or hit 17's."

"Why don't people catch on to this?" asked X. "You make it seem so freaking obvious."

Park sighed. "Unfortunately, certain kinds of enthusiasm are just human nature. That and people don't want to think."

X and Park paid and Park left a huge tip then he drove X back to the ballet academy building. A week later Mrs. Rousseau asked X about some company he'd never heard of, though inwardly, he wanted to chuckle at Park's choice of the name "Acrobat Ventures, LLC", X just played dumb.

In his late night walks around Singapore, X had always noted that certain buildings seemed more or less secure. He had committed the names and addresses from the donor list to memory and now started checking them against his perceptions of certain buildings being weak. One new high rise condo tower on Orchard had particularly piqued his interest. And three names from the donor list had it as their address. He started planning.

At the same time he was throwing himself into his ballet dancing with everything he had. Some nights when he wasn't sneaking out to walk around Singapore, X would sneak into the huge second floor studio and repeat that afternoon's class in the wash of moonlight and street lighting that came into the studio, not turning on the lights for fear of being caught and sent back to his room. The second month at the academy he was, again, easily the boy most often corrected in front of the rest of the class but the citations were less frequent and the instructors noted how he was continually improving. It also became clear to him that they had realized that he could take criticism without it bothering him so they would carp at him as a way to criticize all of them without hurting any of the more fragile boys' egos. The third month he was just barely the most often corrected and sometimes the instructors were really reaching to find faults. And they occasionally praised him. They started complimenting him for his leaps and the incredible speed of his spins and turns. They also started explicitly citing him as an example for the other boys in how to partner the girls.

"Look at how Li does it! See how smoothly he puts Sun down. It seems like she must weigh nothing at all. Is skinny Li that much stronger than the rest of you?! How much do you weigh, Li?"

"A hundred forty three pounds, sir, 65 kilos."

"At least half of you weigh more than him! You should stronger than Li! You should be able to outpartner Li!"

X would look at Cyril and Zhao when the instructors said such things. They were starting to crack under the pressure. They had no edge over X any more. All his minor issues of technique were improving and he was still so much better an athlete than either of them as to make a comparison risible.

In the next several months, X had another growth spurt, rising three more inches to his full height of six foot one or 1.85 meters. He grew up but almost not at all out, still with a 28 inch waist at six foot one. But he did gain some upper body strength from the daily partnering of the ballerinas. And he kept on working overtime, going to the second floor studios half the evenings now.

Somehow Cyril and Zhao found out about it and suddenly one night X was at the barre stretching when who should walk in but those two. They didn't say much. Cyril muttered something to the effect that X had had to work twice as hard to get even with them and let's see what happens if they work twice as hard, too. They would stay on the other side of the studio from him, like two armed and warring camps, in this case of ballet dancers.

This lasted for a little over a month. Then Cyril had an ankle injury. Zhao had a sore knee. They couldn't keep up the pace. They missed some classes and could be seen in the hall outside the studio icing their respective ankle and knee after other classes. Some of the other boys had injuries, too, as did some of the girls. X never got hurt. He never turned an ankle, twisted a knee or pulled a hamstring. He never felt so much as a twinge of pain. X felt reinforced in the conviction that others had first stated that he was made for ballet.

X also got himself as much experience as possible by volunteering for every "Cultural Enrichment Program" performance. These were truncated performance, usually 30-45 minutes that the Singapore Ballet Academy students would give at schools all around the island. The boys mostly hated doing them. As Santos explained it to X, "All the schoolboys snicker at you because you're wearing tights. You get treated like a sissy boy joke. The stages all suck. The floors are all bad. They have no bounce. They're uneven. They have notches and openings for tying in stage scenery and other stuff. And nobody appreciates anything you do. Whether you dance really well or even if you're bad you get the same polite golf clap, that fake, no enthusiasm clapping like at golf tournaments when a guy sinks a put from two feet away. You don't wanna do it, X."

But he did. In fact, X pleaded with the Ballet Academy staff to schedule more performances at more schools. Niki, Sun and Mai were also interested in doing as many of these performances at schools as possible. With very few other students taking part, X and the three ballerinas started doing many more performances than the Academy students had ever done. X liked it. Whatever the environment, it was a chance to hone his craft. They would be driven to one of the area schools arriving an hour before the end of the day. They'd change into their costumes. Some dopy principal would introduce them and they'd give the best performances they could, under the circumstances, of any of eight or ten different excerpts from famous ballets.

X, Niki and Sun came back from one at a nearby secondary school or high school and they were met in the hallway of the second floor by Santos and a couple of the ballerinas. Santos rolled his eyes. "So, you have a good time having hundreds of boys snicker at you?"

"They don't snicker at him," said Niki.

Santos frowned skeptically. He looked to Sun for confirmation. She shook her head and pointed to X's backside.

The other ballerinas burst into giggles.

X only sighed. He tried to convince Santos to give it another shot but the Filipino boy wasn't interested. What he, and all the other students were really interested in was getting to perform with the Singapore Dance Theatre. X got his first shot at age 15 and a half, after being at the Academy for a little over a year.


	14. Xavier Li, ballet dancer -- part IV

All the ballet academy students wanted to appear on stage with the only serious local ballet company, the Singapore Dance Theatre. They wanted to show what they could do. They wanted to use any appearance as an audition of sorts to the management of the ballet company. And they wanted to see what it was like the night of a performance. They knew that the daily life of professionals in a dance company was not so very different than a day at the academy, with the obvious differences that professionals didn't have to take academic classes, lived on their own and could come and go as they pleased. The students wanted to be part of a real performance.

To X's frustration, Cyril and Zhao got to take part in performances months before he ever did. The ballet master of the Singapore Dance Theatre just showed up in class one day and tapped them on the shoulder. That night they appeared in crowd scenes in two acts of a ballet. They would annoy X by beginning statements with, "Well, when I danced with the Singapore Dance Theatre . . " and add "Oh, that's right, X. You have no idea what it's like."

Several months later, X finally got his chance. It happened the same way. The ballet master, a young, long haired Chinese guy, came marching into the studio as the students were still stretching and tapped X, Yeo and Niki to go with him. They appeared in the background of a couple of crowd scenes that night. X had immediately called his mother to tell her that he was going to make his professional debut.

It wasn't much of a debut. Like Yeo and Niki, he just stood at the back of the stage pretending to be talking to one dancer supposed to be his father and another his brother and then reacting to a fight in one scene, a wedding in the other. He hated his costume. "I look like a medieval Kid Flash or something," he'd remarked to Yeo before the performance started. His tights, which were insanely tight, even for tights, tighter than any pair he'd ever worn, had a yellow left leg but a red right leg while his satiny looking top was red on the left side but yellow on the right side and his sleeves were the reverse. He had to wear a silly, floppy red hat. Yeo had giggled at the sight of him backstage before they had gone over to their assigned positions.

But, even though he looked ridiculous and didn't do any actual dancing, even though the dancer playing his father seemed to make a couple passes at him, whispering to him on stage that he had amazing calves and "the most magnificent derriere", even though the pay was minimal, X would not have missed it for the world. This was going to be his job. He watched everything and took in everything, the frantic care of tailors and seamstresses to everyone's costume, even his ludicrous one, the concern of the hairdressers, makeup people and those charged with the stage scenery, the ballet master giving last moment instructions and the dancers most of all. Their absolute dedication to their individual performances and the overall story presented to the audience made him smile. It made him proud.

Even though he was not yet officially one of them, these were his colleagues. They were going to be his co-workers and their seriousness and their commitment made him feel good about being a ballet dancer.

In some small way, it probably contributed to the fight shortly after that during an outing to the Mandarin Gallery Mall, that pride. It was one of the occasional outings the school had as a group. Supervised jail breaks, X and Santos called them. The dancers had all arrived as a group but X immediately split off. He wanted to look at the banks at either end of the mall. He was tinkering with the notion that maybe The Acrobat should knock over a bank. Unfortunately, Santos tagged along with him so X couldn't quite so openly case them as he might have wished. As it was, Santos asked why he kept staring at these stupid banks. So, he walked around with Santos, whose company he didn't mind but pretending to care about buying this or that stupid gadget or shirt he did mind. Despite having more than five million dollars in bullion and accounts held for him by Park, X pleaded poverty as a way to avoid discussion of these things. Santos had grown up poor outside Manila and was fascinated by all of it.

After an hour or so, X had had an unsatisfying look at both bank entrances and gone in a bunch of flashy stores with Santos and they were making their way back to join the others. They were going down an escalator when they saw Tarquin and Wang Ping, two of the smallest boys and the two most openly effeminate of all the boys at the academy being picked on by three bigger boys. Half of the boys in the academy were gay but Tarquin and Wang Ping were flamboyantly so. From 200 meters away people could see that Tarquin and Wang Ping were gay. It didn't mean anything in the academy but out in the real world it immediately got them picked on.

Afterward, Santos backed up X's story to the mall security and ballet academy officials that he had first warned the three bullies to let his friends go. Tarquin and Wang Ping were hardly X's friends but they were fellow dancers. And X had such pride in being a dancer. Santos attested that, in response to the bullies' sneers, that, yes, X had said that he, too, was a ballet dancer. His account of the fight that followed was very vague but not intentionally so. It had simply been hard to follow. X had waded into the three of them so fast Santos couldn't believe it. Each step toward one seamlessly flowing into an elbow to the head of another or a side kick to the third. The three had gotten up multiple times. The rumor afterward was that all three sixteen year olds, a year older than X, had reputations for fighting in school. They didn't give up easy. If they had, the lead bully wouldn't have gotten the final punches that required wiring his jaw shut. The other two might not have gotten the kicks resulting in their broken ribs and torn knee ligaments.

Though X was treated like a fearsome sort of hero by the boys and girls back at the academy, Santos was certain that X was in big trouble. In between guffaws of praise for how ferociously X had beat up the three bullies he would tell X "But, they're gonna come down on you, man." meaning the academy's executives. He only felt confirmed in that belief when the academy called in X's mother, Mrs. Li. He didn't understand how X could take it so casually and only smirk. They'd called in his mother! When they brought in your parents you were a goner. He was in big, big trouble! If he didn't get expelled, it would at least be bye bye scholarship.

X never told anyone just how things went down. The story came out through one of the secretaries who spoke in surprising tones of admiration. She'd supposedly heard it all from the next room. Mrs. Li, a very pretty, petite woman wouldn't back down to the academy officials at all. She not only wouldn't accept X being given any punishment, any punishment at all, she demanded that the academy give X an award for standing up to homophobic bullying. According to the secretary, the officials nearly shouted at her. They threatened to take away X's scholarship or outright expel him. They laughed haughtily at her. But ten minutes later they agreed to exactly what she had said. One of them trudged listlessly into the secretary's office, where she was suddenly typing away at the fastest rate possible, and directed her to arrange with a local store that "does that sort of thing" to have an award, a plaque made out commemorating Xavier Li's heroic response to homophobic bullying.

X was pretty sure, after that point, that the Academy's executives had it in for him. They'd been crushed twice by his mom in negotiations and they wouldn't forget it. It didn't matter in the short term. He just kept working on his ballet technique and now he was putting in extra work in the weight room on the ground floor of the Academy. They had a pilates machine that he loved and also free weights and weight machines. X was very careful not to lose any of his extraordinary flexibility, doing extreme stretches and splits before and after every set of weight lifting. The result was that slender, six foot one, 164 pound X could lift the ballerinas as if they were feathers and could leap higher and farther than ever. There was no doubt who was the top boy ballet dancer at the Academy now. It was Xavier Li and there was no other boy even close.

And now he got to meet some of the ultra rich patrons of the Academy and the Singapore Dance Theatre. The second time he got to be on stage, he was, again, just the son of a nobleman though this time he got to make a couple short leaps in time with other boys doing the same. Back stage, an old man with a much younger wife was congratulating some of the dancers on their performance. X turned around and there was the much younger wife looking at him, asking his name. When he told her she nodded and said something to the effect of "Oh, the boy they're all talking about." It seemed that, among the diehard ballet fans, the word had already gotten out about him. She introduced her husband, billionaire Teck Puat Khoo, who came over and shook X's hand. X grinned, both in bashful appreciation of attention, despite the fact that he hadn't really done anything on stage, and because he had already gotten the word about the Khoos. X remembered what Park had said. Wired into the top of British banking since the 80's. Wired into the most corrupt organizations on the planet. Oh, yeah, the Khoos were a target for him. And then, to top it all off, X was invited, along with Yeo and a handful of the professional dancers, to the Khoos' mansion off Orchard Road for a big party the next weekend.

When they arrived in a taxi and got past the guards at the gate, Yeo was upset when it turned out that Mrs. Khoo wanted her and X to serve as waiter and waitress to the two dozen super rich attending the soiree. They were just there to be pretty eye candy for her guests. They weren't actually guests themselves. They had X change into a waiter's outfit and her a waitress. Yeo was furious at Mrs. Khoo's presumption that she could draft them as servants like that. She was amazed at how placidly X took this insult.

But X had another reason for not feeling a sting at Mrs. Khoo so casually drafting him into being a servant. The Khoo mansion was impressive. The fence around it was sturdy. There were various electronic detection measures on the grounds. There were even guards in a shack by the entrance 24 hours a day. But X thought he saw how he could beat it. Then Mrs. Khoo had sent him after doddering old Mr. Khoo and where should X find the old guy but in an impressive, cherry wood paneled library closing a wall safe door and then slowly putting a painting back in place over it. The guy was 80 years old. Everything he did was slow and uncertain and his hearing wasn't good. He hadn't noticed X who ducked back out of the doorway and re-entered from the hallway several seconds later with a silver platter still holding two of the ten flutes of champagne he'd been given. "Mr. Khoo? Sir? Mrs. Khoo wants to speak to you right away downstairs in the dining room!"

Three weeks later the Singapore papers blared "ACROBAT STRIKES AGAIN" and "ACROBAT ROBS ANOTHER BILLIONAIRE". The papers didn't have much detail. The Khoos had been robbed. The articles all said that their mansion had been thought to be invulnerable. No exact figures were available but the Straits Times speculated that the take of the heist had been a million dollars in cash and two paintings each worth more than that. It might have remained one of those heists kept hush hush that the public never finds out about but, as the thief was getting away from the property, one guard, previously knocked out, woke up. He poured bottled water on another to get him up and they called the police as the two of them were running after a shadow. Then, at a street intersection a quarter mile away, they heard the sounds of squealing tires and cars furiously accelerating away from first one direction, then another then another. There were a couple different intersections within a stone's throw of that point a little ways away from the mansion. The guards spun around in place, not sure where to go. Afterward, little devices were found just off the sidewalks that had played the sounds of cars peeling away. It wasn't certain that there had ever been any car hurrying away in any direction. Traffic cameras didn't show any such suspicious vehicle though one camera was found to have been disabled. There was never the slightest clue helping the police make progress toward catching the thief.

It was good that this job was over because X's life would have been too full. He had his ballet dancing and now he had fallen in love with Yeo. She was tall and long legged and slender, very much a match for X himself. And she was pretty, not the prettiest but pretty and with such a positive energy about her. X had liked her from the very start. They always seemed to be on the same wavelength, muttering little remarks to each other in class and before the cultural enrichment performances at local schools that they both did at every opportunity. That undoubtedly had something to do with it. Week after week in class and at these performances X would be holding her to his side, supporting her, lifting her, leaping and spinning in time with her and conveying to audiences of school kids that he was in love with her. It wasn't such a distance to travel that he actually was.

For six months at the Ballet Academy they were open boyfriend and girlfriend. There was even a period of almost a month at the end of that school year when Yeo's roommate had hurt her foot and left the school to have surgery and recuperate. And Yeo had the room to herself. Late at night X would climb up the outside of the building up to her window. She would let him in and they would make love for hours. They shared everything with each other. X eventually told her, "I'm The Acrobat."

"What?!"

She didn't believe him. He brought a painting and showed her the next day. She inspected it and looked at one of the on line stories of one of the Khoo job. She looked back and forth. It . . it was the same painting! You're . . . ?! X nodded. Then he explained it. The whole system has been corrupted by these big banks. Through the way the currency is issued and a hundred other ways they legally steal from all of us. They push wars and they commit fraud with impunity. None of them are ever prosecuted. Look at what happened in the states, noted X. They caught that horrible English bank, HSBC, red handed having knowingly laundered hundreds of millions or billions of dollars for drug cartels and illegally processed transactions for possible terrorist organizations. And what happened? Nothing! They paid a fine and that was it. Not a single banker from HSBC got so much as a court summons never mind getting prosecuted and sent to jail for crimes for which any average citizen would be sent away for life.

After listening, Yeo nodded and they kissed. Oh what joy. It surprised X how much telling this secret, that he thought he was easily keeping, gave him a feeling of relief. She knew all about him. And she loved him. There was a period of about a month where X was sure that life could not be more sweet. He and Yeo made love and life had no tension. Irritations were just theoretical concepts. Every flower seemed to be in bloom. Life itself seemed to be in bloom.

And then, abruptly, the Singapore Dance Theatre offered a job to Yeo. X was delighted. This was what she wanted. It was where he would be, too. She was a year older than him so it wasn't entirely surprising that she got an offer first. 17 seemed to be the cutoff and X was only 16 now. Though he couldn't spend as much time with her he was genuinely happy for her. He loved her and this was what she wanted. It was what she needed for her career. He helped her move her stuff into a small apartment near the SDT's rehearsal space.

When they were apart at first it made perfect sense to X. She had her own schedule. She couldn't be available to him at all hours. But then . . connecting with her became more hit or miss. They made love less frequently. She would plead that she had to go to some promotion for the ballet company. X understood. The dancers had to help advertise for the company. They had to appear at charity galas to further their ties to the upper strata of Singapore society. They had to meet with the patrons of the company. It was part of the job. He understood. But this period stretched and stretched. They were into fall now and finally X hesitantly confronted her, afraid of what he suspected to be true.

She cried and cried. She said she was sorry. She said that she really did love him. But she said that her parents, while they had been friendly to him in person, regarded him as just a poor boy from Geylang and not suitable for marriage. But more than that, she whispered through continuing tears, "You're too risky! You want to beat the whole world. I can't be part of that, X, no matter how much I feel for you."

X grudgingly accepted. What else could he do? He only hugged her and gave her a soft kiss on the cheek. He could no longer press his lips to hers. He wanted to ask why she hadn't said this right away. How could they have been so completely in love if she simply couldn't be with him? What had changed?!

A month later, X's whirl of thoughts about Yeo took on a darker tone. He was in his room at the academy looking over Santos's shoulder at Santos's english paper on his laptop to correct it. He often helped him with his school work. Santos had a half dozen other windows open. Somewhere out of the corner of his eye X saw the name "Yeo". He looked. There it was in the lower left corner of the screen. X frantically clicked on the edge of that box. It was a society page from that day's edition of the Straits Times. Santos had opened it because the top of the page had shown an actress he was sweet on at a movie premiere. The bottom of the page had a picture of Yeo, still dressed as a swan backstage, holding hands with the son of one of the super rich Singapore families that Park had given him the scoop on. The only saving grace was that the guy was from one of the families that Park said wasn't a bunch of crooks.

"Too . . risky," X mumbled falling back away from Santos onto his own bed across the room where he lay for over an hour just staring at the ceiling. A hesitant Santos finally asked him if he was alright. X muttered the softest "yeah".

X wanted to throw himself into his dancing and a new job to get his mind off the crushing hurt of this but he didn't have a job lined up and it was incredibly hard now for X to partner the ballerinas. All of it was a sort of simulation of courtship and romance and he felt so bitterly toward such notions right then. Eventually the hurt faded and he got on with things.

One thing that really helped was that he met Park on a purely social occasion. They had planned it a month before. In the interim, Park's father had died. A stroke or aneurysm or something. The doctors weren't quite sure. Instead of his usual light gray Park wore an incredibly expensive black suit which matched both boys' moods. X explained in the briefest terms what had happened with Yeo. But after some preliminary grim expressions on both sides they ended up laughing and having a good time just talking. It was one of those things that absolutely cements a friendship, realizing that just being with that pal made things better.

Then, The Acrobat pulled another job in late winter. X had spent weeks casing out the home of Ho Sim Guan. He'd found out where the mansion was and had read rumors of a stupendous art collection. But the place was heavily guarded in normal times and the rash of Acrobat robberies had pushed the Guans over the edge. They now had one guy in a guard shack at the black, wrought iron gate to the property and another guy in a guard shack have way up the driveway to the house. To more guards with bulges under their clothes that could only be guns were constantly walking the perimeter of the property. And they were all in constant radio contact.

At first, X wanted to beat all of it anyway just to show them. You can't stop me. It was all just sort of a challenge to him. But he became convinced that it was impossible. He'd gone through every idea he could come up with, zip lines from adjacent properties shot onto the peak of the roof of the Guan mansion. Tunneling. He was on his last night of surveilling the place from a nearby hill, looking through a telescope as a limo rolled to the gates to leave when it occurred to X that it was kind of late to be leaving the place, 1:25 a.m., and that he'd seen a limo leaving this late a few times before. X ran after it. He lost it after a couple turns a mile away. He waited there at that same point the next few nights and then the limo came by again. X was wearing a singlet, running shorts and shoes this time. Just a running devotee out late at night in steamy hot Singapore. X sprinted after the limo and saw it turn a mile ahead into the parking garage of a recently built high rise. He watched, sprinting around the building, for a light to come on. Sure enough, a minute later an apartment a few floors from the top that was dimly lit got much brighter.

X went back to his room at the ballet academy and did his homework, not for school but as a master thief. He found that the apartment was in the name of a very pretty young actress who couldn't possibly have afforded it. This intrigued X. The old man's got a young honey stashed there. What else might he have stashed there?

This turned out to be one of those jobs that was never reported. X broke in while Ho Sim Guan and the actress were both out and found a couple of the most expensive paintings rumored to be in the guy's collection and a safe with a million in bearer bonds and almost as much in cash. The safe had been a pretty good one but X had beat it in five minutes.

What was the guy gonna do, report that his mistress had been robbed? What was she gonna do, report that almost a million in cash that she couldn't possibly have gotten legally on her own was taken from her?

Then, the day that X turned 17, there was a letter in his mail slot at the Academy from Singapore Dance Theatre. They were offering him a job as a corps member. The terms varied a little bit from ballet company to ballet company. Some called the 3-5 male and female stars of their companies "principals". These dancers danced nothing but the top roles in every ballet. Romeo. Juliet. Sigfried. Odile. Etc. . . The next level of dancers, maybe 5-10 in a company might be called "soloists". These dancers, usually a little younger than the principals might also dance the roles of Romeo and Juliet some nights but also lesser roles. Finally there were the "corps" members. Perhaps 25-35 in a ballet company. These were typically the youngest dancers and they would fill out crowd scenes and only occasionally get one of the third or fourth biggest roles in a ballet, almost never the lead roles.

X immediately dialed the number given in the letter and set up a meeting the very next day. He told Santos right away who gave him a congratulatory hug. "First day they could offer it to you, man! They really want you, don't they?" He didn't say anything to Cyril or Zhao. They'd find out. Some of the other dancers found out from Santos and they all congratulated X.

The next day he was ushered into a conference room at the offices of the Singapore Dance Theatre, "SDT" as it was referred to in shorthand by all the staff and dancers. He met with the ballet master, the tall, thin, long haired Chinese guy in his thirties, an older woman in her fifties and a bald man who were executives of SDT and white haired Mr. Gang who apparently was an executive at both the academy and SDT. The ballet master said that they had watched him dancing at the academy and thought he had a lot of promise. They said that, nevertheless, he had to start as a corps member and the bald man presented a 7 year contract for him to sign, sliding it across the polished glass surface to X's side.

X skimmed it quickly then shook his head. "Seven years? That seems awfully long to me," he said. "And what if you don't think I'm any good? Why would you want me to sign a contract that long now? I only intend on signing a one year contract."

The four on the other side of the conference room table all shook their heads muttering over each other about why that wouldn't do.

"Well, then I'll just have to have my mother come in and negotiate with you," said X.

"No!" Mr. Gang nearly leaped forward with a pen, leaning over the table and crossing out the 7 in the contract and writing in "one". "One year will be fine."

The others on the other side of the table looked at him quizzically. X only smiled and signed the contract.

Just as X had quickly transitioned to be a ballet academy student he quickly adjusted to the life of a professional dancer. The pay wasn't anything special. X got himself a good apartment nearby the SDT's rehearsal studios, a little better than he could really have afforded if he didn't have eight million dollars secretly in reserve. He got his stuff out of the academy's dorm that day giving goodbye hugs to Santos and some of the other dancers. He told his mother, Park, Hao and Yong. Hao laughed "Damn, dude, you decide these things and then they just have to come true, don't they?"

Yong went on to become a doctor just as his parents had always intended. Hao got a business degree and became a high paid executive managing the assets of Acrobat Ventures, LLC and Taipei Procurements, LLC a company owned by Park, among others.

But X was now officially in his career. Park insisted that X meet him that evening at Restaurant Andre on Bukit Pasoh Road. On his entering, Park gave X a slap on the back and a hug. Again, the staff was quite familiar with Park deferring to him and offering whatever he wanted and, of course, getting very generous tips.

"Congratulations on going where you wanted to go, man!" said Park toward the end of the night.

"I'm not there yet but this is part of it," said X. "I'm a real dancer now and I'm really close to my enemies now."

***Author's note:***

I didn't make up that stuff about HSBC. Do searches for something like HSBC caught laundering drug money and HSBC and terrorist organizations. You'll find that they were caught red handed in the U.S. knowingly processing hundreds of millions or billions of dollars for drug cartels and suspected terrorist organizations that legally they couldn't come anywhere near. And all they got was a fine. No one was prosecuted or went to prison. The big banks run the U.S.


	15. Xavier Li, ballet dancer -- part V

X was now a professional ballet dancer. He got a role in nearly every ballet performance put on by the Singapore Dance Theatre or SDT. But the roles were tiny. If you looked past Romeo and Juliet at the front of the stage and past a score of other Montagues and Capulets you might have seen a tall, slender, strikingly handsome boy at the back of the stage doing . . nothing. He was always at the back of the stage, in crowd scenes. He was extremely frustrated with the glacial pace of getting important roles in the SDT's productions. The staff liked to use him as eye candy and they were quick to have him meet the wives of billionaire patrons of the ballet. X didn't mind that latter part. But they still weren't giving him big roles. They weren't even giving him small roles. Most of his roles had a number after them. Villager #6. Nobleman's son #3.

He understood that the SDT wasn't just going to throw aside its top male dancers for a 17 year old newcomer. Fine. When he first started at the boarding school, he understood it. He was 14 and though he could leap higher than any of the other dancers, his technique was spotty. And he had no experience partnering ballerinas.

But, now, he was 17. And he was very good at partnering ballerinas. He loved it. And he knew that the women loved dancing with him. After one morning class, X overheard a couple of the ballerinas talking to SDT's ballet master and telling him that they liked being partnered by X more than by any of SDT's principals or soloists. Even Yeo, soon to be Yeo Ong as she was now engaged to the son of the founders of the Ong family real estate empire, even Yeo whom X had to work to maintain a friendly professional attitude toward, even she was telling the ballet master how good X was. But still, week after week he got only the lousiest possible roles. For months, X just sucked it up and took it. He showed up at charity events and promotional events as requested and didn't complain to executives that he was more than just a pretty face and a hot body to be trotted out for pictures. He didn't complain to the ballet master. What was he going to say anyway? The guy knew that X was dying to get better roles.

Then, he had an idea. Before SDT posted everyone's roles for the upcoming two weeks of performances of the ballet Don Quixote, he and one of the ballerinas practiced over and over the pas de deux between Basilio and Kitri featured in Don Quixote. X thought he made an excellent Basilio and that the ballerina was an excellent Kitri. They danced it together in front of the rest of the company's dancers the day before casting was announced. The other dancers even applauded them. But the staff didn't let either of them dance those roles. In fact, they seemed to be angry at X and the ballerina for showing them up. When opening night for SDT's Don Quixote arrived, X was not dancing a significant role. He was quietly fuming at the back corner of the stage, just another guy in a crowd scene, Villager #5, watching other guys dance the lead roles doing a lesser job than he would have dancing those parts.

He couldn't understand why they were doing this to him. They knew what a terrific dancer he'd become. They always had him up front at promotional events. There was no doubt about what they thought of his looks and how he filled out a pair of tights. Were they really still pissed off that his mother had kicked their asses so completely in negotiations? He wondered.

Maybe, but behind it all he came to realize, they had utterly rigid, traditional notions of a hierarchy at SDT. The best, most established dancers were principals. They got the biggest roles. Then there were soloists and they sometimes got the biggest roles but often danced the roles of secondary characters. Then there were corps members and they danced whatever roles they could get. The SDT believed in long, predetermined periods of apprenticeship in the corps before becoming a soloist and then still more years at that level before becoming a principal. It didn't matter that X might be better than the soloists and principals at dancing some roles right now.

But X had leverage that most other dancers whom the staff kept under their thumb seldom had. For one thing, he'd executed a string of successful robberies of super wealthy patrons of the Singapore Ballet. X had fenced the loot through Park's organization and was financially independent. For another, X had an option. He didn't just call up Hao's uncle and have a card made this time.

X had a video of him and that ballerina dancing the roles of Basilio and Kitri and some other video of his dancing and he sent it all along to the Hong Kong Ballet. To his pleasant surprise, the man from HKB's staff to whom he spoke knew all about X.

He bided his time for another month. His one year contract was almost up. Though he was anxious for the confrontation, X waited for the staff to contact him. Finally, after morning class one day the ballet master just casually approached him and told him that they wanted to see him in the office.

X showered, changed and went to a phone. He called the Hong Kong Ballet and spoke for just a minute to the executive he'd been emailing. Then he went up to the company director's office. There, behind an imposing desk was the bald man, the older woman and Mr. Gang from his last negotiating session.

From the moment he sat down, they started telling him that he should sign a new contract for 4 years. X wondered aloud why they would want to give a contract at all to a dancer who they didn't think was worthy of any significant roles at all. Mr. Gang, in particular, grinned. It was a smile that was the equivalent of laughing in his face and telling him that they'd put him in his place. The bald man told him that he'd just have to wait his turn.

X said a casual "Goodbye", not another word, just "Goodbye" then got up from his seat and left the building. Somewhere behind him in the office doorway then at the top of a set of stairs was Mr. Gang shouting first questions then angry remarks.

X just kept going. He got to his apartment and called up Mr. Jing at the Hong Kong Ballet. "Sir? I would like to dance for the Hong Kong Ballet. Does your offer still stand?" The man on the end of the line said that, yes, they would hire X starting immediately.

And so, still short of his 18th birthday, X left Singapore and became a dancer working for the Hong Kong Ballet.

Right away, in this new environment, everything seemed to click for X. The Hong Kong Ballet, HKB for short, had the same categories of dancers and a bit of a seniority system of its own. But they couldn't deny the pretty new boy from Singapore's amazing ability. Maybe part of their giving him roles right away was a desire to tweak their rivals from Singapore. Whatever the reason, X got good roles right away in Hong Kong.

He moved into a nice apartment near HKB's offices right away and was at their studio the next day before any of the other dancers. He was at the barre warming up when HKB's ballet mistress, Tang Min, approached him with a smile.

"Mr. Li!"

"Call me X," he told her.

She shook his free hand away from the barre and told him how happy the company was to have him on board. "In fact . . X," she concluded, "How would you like to have a big role in our next production, La Bayadere?"

X grinned. "I'd love it, ma'am."

"Okay. You'll be the golden idol in eight out of 10 performances."

X was taken aback. Just like that? That's all it takes here? "Thank you, ma'am! I won't let you down."

He continued warming up and then, remembering something he wanted to do, went back to the locker room and got his special throw away phone and called Park. His pal picked up right away.  
"What's up, artiste?"

X laughed. "Hey man, I'm in Hong Kong now. I dance with the Hong Kong Ballet now. I'd like to talk to you, get a scouting report for this place just like you gave me for Singapore."

"Seriously? Hong Kong, huh? Were they short one pretty boy?" he laughed.

X sighed. "I'll tell you about it when we meet."

"Okay, well, how about a week from tomorrow? I'll contact you."

X said okay. By then he'd be dancing this golden idol role in HKB's production of La Bayadere. X didn't know much about that one. He'd heard of it. It was one of the 10 or 15 classic ballets but that was about all X knew. At class he was introduced to all the other dancers. They seemed like a great bunch of guys and girls. At the end of morning class, one of the ballerinas asked him if he was going to have a role in La Bayadere. X said yeah. The Golden Idol. The ballerina and two others laughed and asked him to turn around. X shrugged, perplexed. The girls all guffawed pronouncing him the perfect Golden Idol.

It was only in the locker room, talking to the guys, that X found out what they were laughing about. The Golden Idol role was that of a golden statue that comes to life at the wedding reception of two of the characters and dances a very difficult two minute long solo. The only costume for this role was a dance belt and gold paint covering the dancer's body from head to toe. Nothing else., though usually the dancer got to wear some sort of crown so that he didn't have to paint his hair.

What?!

X was taken aback when he watched some of the available on line video of different guys dancing this role. Tights aren't exhibitionist enough?!

To make things just a little worse, they even insisted that X, who had only sparse, whispy hair on his forearms and calves get a full body waxing just the same. Why would a statue have hair? X put up with it. He was going to do whatever it took to show what he could do with this role. He practiced it over and over in the week leading up to HKB's first performance, dancing it 30 times. By opening night he didn't care that he was almost naked on stage except for gold paint all over. He amazed the audience with his leaps and spins. There was a roar of applause when he was done.

Back stage afterward, X was embarrassed at having to stand there with his butt covered only in gold paint while HKB executives, donors and fans came by and congratulated him. There must have been 20 fans. Most of them wanted to stand next to him and have their picture taken. Finally there was one slender guy in a nice suit.

Oh, no, thought X. But, yes, it was Park. He was pretending to be a fan. He snickered at X's costume or lack thereof and asked him to autograph a program. X did and then noticed that it wasn't a program. It was a paper copy of the menu for Tin Lung Heen one of the most expensive restaurants in Hong Kong, on which Park had written 10 p.m.

X arrived in civilian clothes but still with a faint gold glow to his skin. The staff of the restaurant knew Park and treated him with deference as the staff had at their usual meeting place in Singapore. X had hacked HKB's site just as easily as he'd hacked SDT's and had 20 pages of printouts with him.

Park amazed him with his encyclopedic knowledge of the super rich of another city, not just the obvious ones like Li Ka-Shing, Lee Shau Kee and Chen Yu-Tung whom X had heard of but almost every name of the prominent donors to HKB. Park directed him toward 10 or 12 targets in particular, guys like Pan Sutong, Billy Kan and Helen Wong. The two pals had a great time and starting the next day X launched into his homework on the prime targets.

X also read the first reviews of HKB's performance. It was the first time he'd ever been mentioned in a review as The Straits Times in Singapore had never bothered to mention the pretty boy at the back of the stage. The reviewer from The Standard gushed that "Xavier Li electrified the audience with his charismatic athleticism". The South China Morning Post said that ". . another big plus was Xavier Li as the golden idol who drew applause for his flawless technique and jaw dropping leaps and spins".

A month later, X got to dance the role of Tybalt in half of HKB's performances of Romeo and Juliet. One reviewer came backstage afterward and was as anxious to congratulate him as the dancers playing the two lead roles. "Xavier Li's Tybalt is a revelation," said one reviewer, "conveying in the merest gesture and expression his contempt for these Montague boys who want to be with his cousin Juliet. One sees that only an incredibly lucky thrust by Romeo could have vanquished this impressive Tybalt. Mr. Li has quite a future ahead of him if he can continue to imbue roles with personality as he does with Tybalt and combine that with his unmatched athletic ability."

X had had a lot of fun with the role. In rehearsals he'd mock fenced with the guys dancing Mercutio, Benvolio and Romeo and easily whipped all three. He'd brought that sense of knowing he could kick their asses to the role perfecting a mocking smirk toward all three. Tybalt was too anxious to fight but the role could be a lot of fun for a confident dancer. And that X was.

After that, X's next few roles were centered on partnering and the critics loved him even more, if that was possible, when they saw how smoothly and effortlessly he danced with the ballerinas. X was getting all sorts of attention now. After just a couple months in Hong Kong, there were several youtube videos up of some of his performances. The ballet's patrons, especially the relatively young wives of old billionaire men loved being around the slender pretty boy in tights who was practically bursting with athleticism.

This quality was not missed by other parties. After one performance dancing the role of Tybalt, X came backstage after supposedly being killed by the guy playing Romeo, as if that wimp could ever so much as scratch him, and found a guy looking for him and offering him his card. The guy circled around him and declared him "perfect!". If only it hadn't happened in front of other dancers, X would have been able to ignore it. But, officially, X was just barely getting by on the lousy salary of a corps dancer at HKB. So, he had to go along with it for appearances.

In short order, X was the guy seen for about 5 seconds in the 30 second commercials for the Ab Dragon. And he was the shirtless guy on the box showing off his eight pack abs that he was supposed to have gotten from using the Ab Dragon. It was the same device marketed in similarly cheesy commercials in the U.S. as the Ab Roller. Likewise, the elliptical machine the ads for which featured X, was the exact same machine as was being sold in the U.S., U.K. and Australia. But for Hong Kong customers they wanted Chinese men and women. The other dancers laughed watching the tv ad on youtube in the studio. Half way through the ad, the camera zoomed in on X's buns while he ran on the machine and the voice over promised customers "the glutes you always wanted". Lastly, X appeared front and center among 12 other supposed class attendees of an exercise class being run by some supposed fitness guru pitching his X90P total body makeover DVD's. Shirtless and wearing shorts just big enough for him X was the only guy who got his own line in the 60 second commercial. "X90P gave me these abs!" he said into the camera rubbing one hand over his eight pack as he lied.

X's girlfriend most of the time he was in Hong Kong, Hua, saw him on the subway and remarked to two other girls with her that "It's the X90P guy!". They followed him into a train station and Hua followed him onto a train. At some point, for no particular reason, maybe feeling her eyes on him, he turned toward her. Their eyes met. With barely a word he took her hand and they went straight to his apartment and his bedroom.

She couldn't believe that he was a ballet dancer when he told her afterward. She said that she thought they were all prancing little sissy boys. X was anything but. They were immediately together everywhere for the next eight months. She was a beautiful Chinese girl who worked in computers. X loved how smart she was and this, in itself, was attractive to her. She'd dated boys who didn't like or at best put up with the fact that she was so intelligent and had her own ideas. Six months into it, she took him to meet her parents. X had suggested she might take them to a performance of the Hong Kong ballet first but she laughed that she didn't want them to see her boyfriend in tights before they saw him in regular clothes.

Everything was going great so one night, in bed, X told her about the other side of his life. He knew right away that there was a problem in the way she caught her breath. It turned out that, though her father was some kind of businessman, her grandfather was a cop, two of her uncles were cops, three of her cousins were cops and even her sister worked as a dispatcher at a police station. X tried to talk them around it or through it. He wasn't robbing innocent people. These super rich bankers were casually robbing the whole world every day. But she couldn't get past the feeling that it was X or her whole family and she couldn't let go of her family.

X was disappointed but he had to acknowledge that he was confronting the same choice in the other direction. If he had dropped the other half of his life, he could have lived with Hua. But he couldn't let go his loyalty to his family, to his betrayed father. And as much as he loved ballet the idea of that being the only enterprise in his life seemed silly on its face. How could that possibly be enough for him?

Out of Singapore now, X felt more free to give money to his family. His mother had always known what he was doing. He could never keep a secret from her. Now that he was away in Singapore and the exact nature of his finances was a little more uncertain to anyone in Singapore, he bought his mother a condominium apartment in a much nicer building not far from her friends and an easier ride to her job but out of Geylang. He bought special gifts for Grandpa Li and Grandma Li, too. He tried to visit at least every couple months but that schedule got messed up when the HKB went on tour.

They were traveling for the last few months of X's year with HKB, first giving performances in Tokyo then Vancouver, Seattle, L.A. and Jump City. At the end of the tour, the rest of the dancers were all flying back to Hong Kong. Without reason, with no rational justification that he could cite to anyone, X told everyone that he was going to stay in Jump City for now. He couldn't tell the others exactly why. They would never have believed him.

It had started when their plane landed. The dancers all sauntered off, using every counter and railing in sight for stretching. X was at an unused gate desk stretching first one leg then the other facing a sign that said "Welcome to Jump City!" and there was just something about it. He kept staring. There was a meaning to it somehow. He felt sure of that. There was a meaning. Or there was going to be a meaning.

After the last performance that week, the dancers were all packing up getting ready to fly back home and X passed that same sign in the terminal on the way to their gate. "Welcome to Jump City". Something was wrong. Something was missing or hadn't been done. That was it. Something hadn't been done. X hurried up to the gate and rescheduled his flight for three days out.

The other dancers all kidded him. He couldn't give them a reason but he walked out of the airport and grabbed a cab to go back to the same four star hotel they'd been at. Once there, he got another room for a few days and went back down to the lobby. He took a deep breath. This was a little crazy, staying three extra days because of a vague presentiment of . . . something. But that's what he was doing. He looked around the high class lobby and sighed.

"Okay, fate," he whispered to himself. "If you're directing me then where to now?"

Over one shoulder he could hear two spoiled brat rich kids approaching, shouting and making a mess, looking stupid and obnoxious and living up to the very worst expectations of their kind. As they reached X, their mother gave him a pleading, apologetic look and grabbed one of them dropping a handful of brochures for local Jump City attractions as she did so. She gathered them up as she hurried along after the other brat but left one behind. X picked it up. It was a brochure for Harbor Tours of Jump City.

Okay, thought X.

Author's Note:

Finally! Next chapter. Master thief to Super thief. Xavier Li becomes Red X.


	16. Master thief to super thief part I

You sometimes saw superheroes on the streets or in the skies over Singapore and Hong Kong, too.

But not often. Maybe once or twice a year. If that.

It wasn't like Jump City. Jump City was off the chain.

As X first got to the hotel with the rest of the Hong Kong Ballet's dancers, just in from Seattle, they were just getting out of their cabs when Beast Boy flew 50 feet above them as a giant green pterodactyl. A giant green dinosaur bird flew right over them! They all fell over onto each other and their luggage trying to keep their eyes on him, looking like the biggest bunch of klutzes in the world and not supremely graceful young men and women. The morning of the next day, X was walking around downtown Jump City and Robin zoomed by him on a motorcycle. That afternoon, he saw Starfire fly along the path of the street crossing the one on which he was walking.

As amazing as the sights of these heroes was, what was almost as startling was how casual the citizens of Jump City were about it. While X and the other ballet dancers were falling to the pavement in amazement at the sight of giant pterodactyl Beast Boy, their cab drivers were almost indifferent. The one who'd driven X and two other dancers rolled his eyes and demanded in a thick Indian accent, "Yes, yes, the green boy who turns into animals. Now who has my $32.50?"

The first day of X's 3 day extension of his time in Jump City, a little before 9 a.m., out of his hotel window, he saw the Titans all leave the Tower in a rush, some of them in a jet that did a vertical takeoff with another figure who looked to be Starfire flying alongside.

The jet and Starfire returned at 6:07 p.m. that evening. X knew that it was 6:07 because he was on a tour boat in Jump Bay at that very moment and looked at his watch as the jet passed just a couple hundred feet overhead. The boat and its 60 passengers had just finished a circuit around the island on which Titans Tower sat. Half of the passengers were families listening with rapt attention to blather over the p.a. system glorifying the Teen Titans. The other half were drunk. And there was X. Only X noticed something odd as the tour boat steamed slowly away from the island.

Titans Tower was a navy blue glass structure. With the sun setting and the light hitting just right on the ocean side of the building, X could see that one piece of glass was strangely darker than the rest, looking almost black, not navy blue. It didn't reflect the light the same way. But as he stared at it some more from the stern of the boat several hundred yards away across the bay he realized that it wasn't a single square of darker colored glass. It must be a window that was open.

The idea for his next great leap occurred right then. It was like a bolt of lightning that charged X's mind.

He would break into Titans Tower.

Yes! That's why he was still here. He was going to break into Titans Tower!

What thieving achievement could top breaking into Titans Tower?! And what tech or tools might he get hold of if he could get inside? Despite the uncertainty of what, if anything, was to be gained besides notoriety, the idea took hold in X's mind and he couldn't think of anything else. And there wasn't any apprehension attached to this idea in his mind. He was going to rob Titans Tower. It felt so certain; it had to be right.

It was the same feeling he'd had when he took up ballet. He couldn't explain it. He just knew, somehow knew that this was the right thing for him. It was like his life clicking into place. It was like the thought of it was the first part of a destiny suddenly perceived.

That was the feeling he had now. It was not rational and he couldn't have explained it or justified it to anyone. If his buddy Park had been there with him he wouldn't have gotten anywhere in trying to justify himself. You . . . you just feel completely certain that you have to do this, that you were meant to? Seriously? That's all you got, X? He knew just what Park would say.

X knew it wasn't rational. But it wasn't like he was a guy prone to flights of fancy. He painstakingly planned out all his jobs. During the day, as a ballet dancer, he would spend hours with ballerinas practicing over and over and over to make 60 seconds of super athletic dancing look deceptively smooth and easy. He was not prone to entertaining whimsical notions. But even though he couldn't explain it he knew he had to do it.

His mentor in crime, the Old Man, had told him that the business was a paradox. You needed to stay within your environment and completely master every aspect of it, know every blade of grass, the bark of every tree in your particular habitat. But where there was an opportunity to leap somewhere else with the possibility of great gain, you had to do it. Develop deep roots and yet be ready to leap.

He started contemplating every facet of it. The task was daunting. What if they came back quickly? And who knows what kind of ridiculous security system they had to prevent anyone getting into that Tower. But the most sensitive, most powerful security system in the world didn't work if you left a window open. X had brought with him to Jump City a set of knee and hand suction cups for climbing the outside of a glass building. He'd never thought of using them at Titans Tower The customs inspectors had just shrugged. He wasn't even completely sure why he had brought them. The vague idea had been to have them just in case he needed them to rob one of the too big to jail banks in one of the cities on HKB's tour if the chance arose.

Now he had a use for them. But he needed more. And he would need another opportunity like today's 9 or 10 hour absence of the Titans. He needed to watch the Tower now. That was fine. He had three more days left in Jump City and there wasn't any other sightseeing he wanted to do more than that. It was all he wanted. All that filled his thoughts was the challenge of breaking into Titans Tower. As soon as the tour boat docked, X walked quickly off, ahead of all the other passengers, and straight to a sporting goods store, though occasionally glancing almost longingly over his shoulder at the navy blue T in the distance. He wanted a navy blue top, loose navy blue running pants and navy blue sneakers all the same color as Titans Tower.

He also bought a black kayak and black paddle. To the clerks' surprise he just carried it all right out to the street. There, he flagged down a cab. The driver was a bit perplexed that this Chinese pretty boy hadn't thought this through a bit better. X didn't want to discuss it and pretended to not speak english. The cabbie was of chinese background but americanized and didn't speak very good mandarin. X lay down some horrible gap filled engrish and got the cabbie to drive him to the entrance of a different hotel than the one at which he was staying without explaining why, only vaguely waving and saying something about "better feng shui".

There was nothing wrong with X's hotel. The room was gorgeous. The place had a four star rating. There was even a woman behind the front desk who was a huge ballet fan who recognized him and positively fawned over him. "Ohygod! Xavier Li!" X autographed some postcards for her daughter who took ballet. But the hotel was a half mile inland from the Jump City coastline and nowhere near where the coast was closest to the island that Titans Tower was on. X got out of the cab at the parking lot entrance of a hotel that was lower rated but on the shore and got the kayak unhooked from the cabbie's bungee cords holding it to the roof and thanked the driver in more fake terrible english while gathering the bag with his navy clothes and kayak paddle.

Once that cab was out of sight, X snuck off the parking lot and into the thick brush and down to the water's edge where he hid the kayak, paddle and clothes. He jogged back up to the parking lot, hailed another cab and went to the four star hotel, got his stuff, checked out and then checked into the hotel at the water's edge and waited.

And he waited.

And he waited.

After the first day of staring out his hotel window at Titans Tower he started to curse himself for being such an idiot. Why the fuck did I think that if they flew out one morning they'd necessarily do it again?! Maybe they won't fly out like that again for months. Maybe it was a one time thing! Stupid! Fucking stupid! Maybe they'll fly out and there won't be an open window. What the fuck then, huh?! What the fuck then?! There's no way they don't have some kind of kick ass security system in that place. What happens if they all fly off but there's no open window? Or what if they don't all fly out? What if Beast Boy and Cyborg are left behind? Or what if another hero type comes by and building sits for them while they're gone? I somehow get in and then Kid Freaking Flash punches me twenty times in a second! He remembered seeing the flame haired boy and his mentor whup Mirror Master on the streets of Singapore.

Over the next couple days, X had these bursts of impatience, venting anger at himself in strings of expletives but as soon as they were done he went back to staring out the window at the Tower. He had to. He just had to. He felt compelled. He just knew. It was going to happen. It was going to happen.

A second day went by. Again, nothing. There weren't even any sightings of the Titans anywhere in the city in those two days. He intermittently cursed his stupid feeling of destiny that had led him to focus completely on this. He wondered aloud about the possibility that he thought they were all gone and breaks in and finds there's still one of them there. And he gets his ass kicked. What about that?

That was certainly possible. But soon enough he calmed down and the idea of this scenario faded. It was going to happen.

He went back to watching the Tower.

And then a third day went by without any sign of any of the Titans, much less his perfect scenario of them all leaving. He was supposed to go home the next day. It was time to reconcile himself to how unrealistic this spur of the moment plan had been. He imagined how Park would be all over him. Are you crazy, miyou?! Did that gold paint seep into your skin and mess with your head? You were so sure you'd pull off an incredible job based on . . . nothing more than a feeling?!

But there was still that underlying certainty, that complete calm when thinking of it. It was so right. It-it was! Anyone would think he was crazy but X picked up the phone and made three moves. He rescheduled his flight back to Hong Kong, got the hotel room for five more days and called the Jump City Ballet.

X was perfectly happy dancing for the Hong Kong Ballet. He was a rising star there and he hadn't come close to robbing all the corrupt rich people he wanted to rob in Hong Kong. There were mega mansions owned by top execs at HSBC that he hadn't even started to recon yet. The CEO at Standard Chartered had a ridiculously weak security system at his mansion. Like papier mache! X had seen it over the guy's shoulder in a magazine article. A piece of crap not worth protecting a double wide trailer. That place was just sitting there, low hanging fruit waiting to be plucked.

And X had been about to sign a new contract with the Hong Kong Ballet. But he spoke to the Company Director of the Jump City Ballet. He said he was going to be in Jump City for three more days and wanted to speak to them about dancing for the Jump City Ballet.

To X's chagrin, the Company Director had no idea who he was. But he put X on hold and shouted to another guy in the next room named Cooper. X could hear them talking. They hadn't put him on hold. The guy had just put his hand over the phone and not completely. The other guy had gasped. "Seriously? Xavier Li would dance for us?! . . . He was that incredible Tybalt on Tuesday night!" There was some more talk that X couldn't quite make out but the guy sounded almost unhinged about having X dance for Jump City Ballet. He came on the line and while now adopting a somewhat blase tone of voice said that he had not only heard of Xavier Li, he said he would love to meet him and discuss the possibility of X dancing for Jump City Ballet. He said something about X being a rising talent at the Hong Kong Ballet. They arranged for X to meet them at their offices in the morning three days out.

X put down the phone and thought to himself, boy wait till I explain _this_ to Park.

He went back to waiting. For the next two days he saw nothing at Titans Tower. Nothing. There were some lights on but that was about it. On the third day, he dressed up in a pair of snug dress pants, a dress shirt and dress shoes and took a cab to the office of the Jump City Ballet. Switching from the Hong Kong Ballet to the Jump City Ballet wasn't entirely crazy even if it had been an impulsive decision. The Jump City Ballet was probably a slightly more prestigious company and, seeing their offices, certainly had a bigger building for itself. A nicer one, too.

X went up to the security desk in the lobby. "I'm Xavier Li and I'm here to see the Company Director and Mr. Cooper."

He was directed up two stairwells to a big office with beige carpet so thick a snake could hide in it. Facing the door was a huge mahogany desk and surrounding it were high, rosewood bookcases. He shook hands with the Company Director and Mr. Cooper. After some preliminaries they asked him what he was looking for. He told them he wanted a one year contract as a guest soloist and that if both parties were happy, they could enter a longer contractual arrangement after that.

The director and Cooper both said that they couldn't start him out as a soloist. No. That was too much. He'd be a corps member. But they said that they were very much interested in having more dancers of asian background. "Especially one who's so amazingly athletic!" chirped Cooper eliciting a reproaching look from the Director.

The director stretched his arms out wide as if to encompass the whole city. "Look around Jump," he said. "23% of the populace is of asian ancestry. But we've only got two ballerinas and one man of asian background in the company. Three dancers out of 55. That doesn't look right."

"And we watched your progress in Singapore and Hong Kong. You showed a very . . charismatic athleticism," noted Cooper first grinning and then, seeing another stern look from the Director, trying to suppress it back to a more poker faced presentation.

"Well, I'm not going to be here because of the color of my skin and hair and the shape of my eyes," X told them. "I'm a better dancer than any of your men now. And I won't accept a spot as just a corps member." This wasn't just bluster. X had watched videos of the Jump City Ballet on a laptop in his hotel room with Titans Tower in the background out the window so that he could watch the videos and also see any movement at the Tower. He wasn't impressed by any of the Jump City Ballet's top male dancers, Greg Anderson, Mikhail Timofiev or Devon Pennington.

"I'm here because my family is moving to the U.S., " X lied. "I'll be here in Jump City today and this is my first choice but I've already booked a week in New York to talk to NYCB and ABT. If I leave here today without a contract I won't be back."

Cooper's expression was pained. He shot a pleading glance at the Director. X knew he had him.

"But soloist?" he whined.

"I already worked up from corps member to soloist with Singapore Ballet and Hong Kong Ballet. I'm not going to spend any more time as a piece of eye candy just standing there as another noble at the side of the stage watching the soloists and principals dance."

They asked for X to go into the hallway and give them a minute to discuss the matter. X went outside and saw that there was a huge window on the other side of it that overlooked one of the practice studios. He saw a whole flock of ballerinas warming up to some Tchaikovsky piano accompaniment and among them picked out Natasha Suvarov.

"Oh my god," he whispered as he pressed closer to the glass. "Natasha Suvarov! She's here? Since when?"

He watched her warm up, impossibly fluid and precise in all her movements. Just warming up at the barre she oozed duende, she was so charismatic. She was amazing. The realization struck him.

I could partner Natasha Suvarov!

He watched her doing the most commonplace things at the barre and was still captivated. Those long legs and that amazing booty. He couldn't take his eyes off her and jammed his hands in his pockets. He was about to get hard just watching her and thinking about her.

"Xavier?"

He spun around and there was Cooper.

"Um . . yes?"

Cooper nodded. He led X back into the Director's office. They gave in on X being a guest soloist but played a little bit of hardball on his pay. X pushed back a little but didn't get all the money he probably could have. Part of it was the prospect of dancing with Natasha Suvarov. Part of it was that he had millions of dollars now socked away in various places in various forms, mostly cash and precious metals. Getting that last $5,000 per year wasn't that big of a deal to X.

He left the JCB's offices and hailed a cab back to his hotel with a signed contract in his pocket. It was through the cab window that he saw the double burst of orange of the exhausts of a jet taking off from the roof of Titans Tower and the silhouette of the figure of Starfire as she and the jet flew off to the west over the ocean. The cab was stopped in heavy traffic. X lunged for the door handle.

"This is good enough! Thank you!" he shouted and tossed a $20 dollar bill in the window to the cabbie, enough for a healthy tip, and ran. Even in dress shoes, he ran a 5 minute mile to the hotel's parking lot entrance. He slowed up and walked briskly inside and up to his room. He got his wall climbing suction cups and two rolls of special tape, put them in a small bag and walked out a side door. He melted, unseen, into the thick brush along the shore and made his way over to his kayak. He peeled off his job interview outfit and pulled on a dance belt and his all navy outfit then jumped into his kayak with the small bag and started paddling for the island.

There was a strong current working against him so it was hard work to get to the ocean side of Titans Tower island but X gave it all he had. He didn't know if there would be an open window and he didn't know how much time he'd have even if he could get inside. Anyone else might have been nagged by doubts but X felt none.

When, finally, he got around the rocky edge of the island to where he could see, X threw a fist in the air and shouted, "Yes!" at the top of his lungs. That same window was open again. X made for the one sandy piece of shore he could see and pushed the kayak up into the brush past where shifting tides might get it. He pulled a ski mask over his face and then left the paddle and jogged up to the base of the tower where he put the special rolls of tape in the pocket of his pants.

He pulled on the special suction cups. One pair was at his knees. The other fit over his hands. He had used them before to scale glass facades almost as high as this. X felt confident in his use of them. They'd been how he'd gotten up from the landing where the Hong Kong Ballet reception was held up to the HSBC bank comptroller's office. The trick, X knew, was to never look down.

Clomp . . . clomp . . . clomp . . . clomp . . . X steadily worked his way up the blue glass of the building, moving one of his four limbs every few seconds, always keeping three suction cups in full contact with the glass to hold up his 164 pounds and advancing each story in about a minute's time. He glanced out to the side a couple times. He saw only blue skies and darker blue ocean. There were no boats nearby, no one to point and shout "Hey, there's a guy climbing up the side of Titans Tower!"

More than 5 stories up any fall would kill him, anyway. This notion was oddly almost appealing to X. Going up the side of the 6th then the 7th then the 8th floor and onward didn't mean anything because it wasn't adding any more danger to what he'd faced getting up to the 5th. X talked himself into not fearing it. He just kept working his way up.

The Tower was 14 stories tall and the open window was one floor from the top. It was also about 25 feet over from the vertical shaft of the T. So, after climbing straight up X had to work sideways. This was a little tricky. It was slower going. After 5 minutes of that, the window was just a few feet away. High up now, the wind whipped off the side of the Tower with gusts only adding more, now and then, as X pulled off his left hand suction cup and grabbed for the open window. He got a hold of it and then pulled his left knee off the glass and got his left foot in the window. He got his right knee off the glass and got that foot in the window, too.

Ten seconds later he tumbled through the window, out of the almost blinding reflection of sun off sea with the sound of the wind whipping in his ear into a quiet, darkened room.

I'm in!

He felt himself rolling among all kinds of clutter, so much that he slipped as he started to stand up. At first he couldn't see anything in the dark room. Gradually his eyes adjusted to the much lower light. He saw that he was in a bedroom. A very messy bedroom. A fucking pigsty, actually. As he pulled off the suction cups, he looked around him.

A few feet away there was an unmade bed that looked like its sheets could use some laundering. All around the room were empty pizza boxes from a place called The Vegan Chef, Starbucks coffee cups, a score of those little white takeout boxes from some place called "Tofu Magic" and Skittles wrappers. There was a stack of video games as high as the bed next to one side of it. There were stacks of graphic novels. Some of them pretty good. Those smart Brubaker hardboiled crime ones that X liked, too, and comic books randomly dumped all around the room. He realized that he'd knocked several of them over when he'd come in the window. In a bookcase on one side of the room were more comic books and graphic novels and a huge series of leather bound zoological encyclopedias. Visible hanging in the half open closet door opposite the bed was a pink and black unitard that would fit a guy about five foot four.

"Beast Boy," he said aloud, pronouncing the obvious and starting for the door.

He took one last glance back at the room from the doorway noting a rather incongruous softball sized rock sitting in a prominent display location on the bookcase and someone's poster sized stylized drawing of a naked Raven on the floor by the bed. X raised an eyebrow. O-kay! He took one more look back.

There was nothing for him here. But that was no surprise. Beast Boy didn't use any other tools. His fighting value was his superpower and it was in him. There wasn't any way to steal that. X went out into the hall but made a point of not closing Beast Boy's door by blocking it with a stack of recent vintage Spiderman comics that had been nearby on the floor.

X stepped out into the hall. Here he was, Titans Tower! Titans Freaking Tower!

He looked both ways down the hall. He wished he could scoff and say the place looked cheap or dumb but the opposite was true. The floors were a gleaming black marble. The walls were a combination of silvery stainless steel surfaces and navy blue that looked futuristic and art deco at the same time and . . . he liked it. He really liked it. It was tasteful and cool at the same time, something very hard to pull off.

So . . this is the kind of place you hang out in when you're a suuuuuuuper heeeeeeeero. Hmmph.

He saw that there were finger and hand print reading pads in front of each of the doors. He tugged lightly on the door knob of the next room down the hall. Nothing. No give at all. Locked. But which room should he go to? He thought that maybe he should immediately try to find the right room but he gave himself the excuse that he needed to confirm that none of them were still around, and that no one else was house sitting for them. It wouldn't do any good to run into Speedy or Kid Flash, either. He decided to go up. He glided a few strides down the hall and there was a silver elevator door. He pressed the up button with one still gloved finger. He heard the elevator start to move from another floor and -BING- there it was, on the 13th. He stepped inside the spacious, silver elevator with more black marble floor and practically as soon as his finger left the 14 button the door was opening on that floor.

Okay. So, they've got a kick ass elevator, too.

X stepped out and cautiously looked both ways. But there were no sounds at all. He went to the right, down the hall. This side of the hall seemed to connect to larger open space. He went around the hallway. It was in the shape of a long rectangle with the elevator in the center of it aligned with the center of the long vertical shaft of the T. The other side of the rectangle, if you had exited out the other side of the elevator, seemed to be small empty rooms with no particular purpose. The doors to two of them were ajar and X had looked in but they were just surplus space.

The rest of the rooms in the middle of the oval seemed to be storage rooms and mechanical rooms. The other side of it was the real point of this floor. At the end of the hall was a big dry wipe board with a message on it in dark green block lettering.

TITANS! PLEASE CLEAN PLASMUS GOO OFF YOUR UNIFORMS BEFORE LAUNDERING THEM! IT CLOGS UP THE WASHER! AND DON'T USE A HOTTER WATER SETTING THAN NECESSARY. SAVE ENERGY! DON'T BE FUELISH!

Past that, off one end of the oval was a great room, a sort of living room on steroids with a giant tv, ten feet across, surrounded by couches, sectionals and chairs, all of it high end leather stuff, possibly from the Poliform italian furniture maker. He was reluctant to admit it but, again, it was all terrific stuff.

Going past that room there was a long counter topped by a dozen different ring binders with labels like "INTERPOL" and "NSA" in two inch high letters with another oversized TV screen above and, from all the keyboards and buttons, what X guessed was some sort of communications and command center. Past that were large tables and a banquet seating booth and then some small tables and bar stools, the dining area. Past that was the kitchen, featuring two of the largest stoves and two of the largest refrigerators X had ever seen, top of the line stainless steel, naturally, and the floors everywhere were more black marble. The counters were some sort of speckled gray granite that he'd never seen before and that also looked really nice.

"Okay, enough of a tour," he sighed to himself. "This isn't a fucking episode of 'House Flipping Jump City!' Do it!"

He took a deep breath and looked around. There were a lot of plates and glasses on the counter like they'd all taken off just after eating and hadn't had the chance to finish cleaning up. X leaned in close and inspected each plate. There were bits of food on four different plates.

Hmmm. Maybe. Maybe.

But then a better idea occurred to him. "Of course!" X said aloud and jogged back to that communications center, command center area till he stood over the keyboard. Yes! This has to be it. He looked closely at a few keys. Yes! He took his gloves off to type at least some of the time. There were prints there. He pulled the two rolls of special tape from his pocket.

"Maybe I can get everything I need right here," he muttered to himself. X had seen readers outside the door to Beast Boy's room and all the others back on the 13th floor. Hand readers, the kind where you put your whole hand on a pad and it identified you by your prints. He was surprised the Titans didn't have retinal scanners although those could be beat, too. Then he remembered little jerk Robin's rumored rep for never wanting to remove his mask. So, maybe the little bat thought it'd be just as safe with readers. The problem with readers was . . . well, the problem was this.

X shook his head like a parent at a foolish child as he applied pieces of the thick, yellow tinged tape to the keys of the keyboard. The tape was pre-cut, perforated in one inch long pieces. Tearing each piece off activated it and it had to be applied right away.

There was the "J" key for Robin's right index, the "K" for his right middle finger, the "L" for his ring finger and the semicolon for his little finger. X counted the sixty seconds that the Old Man had told him to and as he'd seen the Old Man demonstrate it. Then he carefully turned over each of them, leaving the pieces still on their respective keys. He touched the edge of one piece of tape. It was already hard.

And now he took out the other roll of tape and bent down to stare at each piece of tape closely. It was working! You could see a fingerprint on each piece of yellow tape. Then he pulled off pieces off the other roll of tape, this one tinged slightly pink. One side of it was just normal adhesive. He stuck that side to the end of each of his fingers and pressed the other side against the analogous tape from the keys. The yellowish tape had already hardened and pressing the thick side of the red tape against it made the red tape take the shape, the same swirls and ridges as Robin's actual fingerprints. X pulled the yellow pieces off with his teeth.

There were still two problems. He might guess that uptight Robin would be the one typing away at their communications center but he couldn't be absolutely certain. The other was that he still didn't have the thumb. People tended to hit the space bar with the sides of their thumbs. Not good enough. He tried some yellow tape on the space bar but what he could get off it was worthless, not even a good print of the side of his thumb.

Hmmph. X exhaled angrily. So close!

His eyes scanned the whole counter area frantically. He'd hoped to see a coffee cup. Cups were great for thumb prints, especially on the side opposite the handle. People would grip the cup with the outside of their knuckles against the inside of the handle and their thumb pressed tight against the other side of the cup. X imagined a cup with a "World's Greatest Detective's Valet!" label or maybe "Boy Wonder!" or "Riding in the sidecar!" or "Livin' after the ampersand!" or "Sidekickin' it!".

But there weren't any cups at all.

X gritted his teeth angrily. Dammit! But a moment later another thought occurred to him. The plates!

He ran back to the kitchen and carefully unstacked the plates. There were four plates with silverware on each. He now also noticed that at the back of the counter, past the plates, there was a large tea cup with a few drops of green tea in the cup and some crumbs of banana bread on the saucer. Raven.

If he could figure out which of the plates had been Robin's then he might be able to get a good thumb print off the upper side of the end of the fork on that plate. The little bat wouldn't keep his gloves on to eat, would he?

He had the four plates next to each other on the gray granite counter now and looked at the remains of the meals carefully, head turned sideways, one eye opened wide and held just a few inches above the plates. One was easy to eliminate. It had chunks of tofu, a skittle, what looked like pieces of Count Chocula cereal and . . were those Boo Berries? Beast Boy.

He was able to clearly rule out another one. On closer inspection what he thought had been black eyed peas in some kind of casserole sauce appeared to actually be . . oh god, eyes! Tiny eyeballs swimming in a sea of . . mustard. What the f-?! Starfire?! Holy shit, those really are eyeballs! What the fuck?! X pushed that plate away on the counter to get it out of his sight.

The remains of food on the other two plates was almost identical, a few tiny scraps of meat, some kind of steak, and not more than enough vegetables to fill a teaspoon. He inspected the two plates very closely trying to find . . . -there! There!

In his excitement, X almost clapped his hands together which would have ruined the tape. There was an actual black eyed pea in among the specks of vegetables on one plate. Soul food. Cyborg! X pushed that plate away and focused on the remaining one and the fork on it.

He got out the yellow tinged tape and pulled off a piece and carefully applied it to the upper side of the end of the fork on the plate he now guessed had been Robin's. He grinned when he removed the tape. There was a good thumb print. As before, he put a piece of the pink tinged tape on his thumb and then transferred that pattern of swirls and ridges to it.

X immediately marched out of the kitchen to the elevator. He had another one second ride, -bing!- this time down one floor to the 13th where he immediately realized he had another problem, how to figure out which room was Robin's? The system might refuse entrance to any room after a couple misses if he just tried his new stick on prints on all of them.

And after considering that, he thought again about which room he most wanted to get into. He wouldn't get anything out of going into Raven's room, would he? What would be in there? Spell books? Magic talismans of all sorts that he didn't have a clue how to work? No, there was no point in going into Raven's room.

And what would he find in Starfire's room? Stuffed animals? The galaxy's largest collection of plushies? He'd already seen Beast Boy's room. Not much value there until the week of Comic Con. Cyborg? Hmm. There could be some interesting tech there. But the problem was that all of Cyborg's stuff was probably made to be integrated into his system. Even if you could cadge some of it, hey, I've got a piece of forearm with a sonic cannon in it! What the fuck do you do with that?!

No, it was obvious that the place where he could get something valuable out of this for his future thieving would be Robin's room. What kind of tech did the little jerk have sitting on the sidelines? X ray vision goggles integrated into his mask? Maybe he's got a version of that bo-staff with lasers or a bunch of new features. And there were always the birdarangs. Plus there was whatever he was working on that hadn't come out or maybe some things that he'd never gone public with that would be perfect for pulling jobs.

X walked the entire oval of the 13th floor hallway. None of the doors had names on them. There were just numbers, 1 through 23. X walked the loop of the hallway a second time. Now he noticed something relevant. The hand print readers at most of the 23 doors had some dust on them. They hadn't been used lately. And X walked the oval of the 13th floor one more time focusing on the five hand print readers that weren't at all dusty. Four of them had casually messy hand prints, slight traces of skin oils and slight scratches on the navy blue glass of the reader and the black plastic of its frame. One had a remnants of some Super Sugar Crisp cereal. But one was pristine, as though, in a fit of obsessive compulsiveness, someone had cleaned it regularly and had just recently shined it. X broke into a big grin.

He took a deep breath looking down at the navy blue tinged glass surface that tilted up on a 45 degree angle from where you were supposed to put the heel of your hand to where your fingertips went. X pressed his hand, with the five pieces of pink tape giving him copies of Robin's fingerprints, onto the reader. He purposely cupped the palm of his hand hoping that the reader would be kinder to uncertainty than a mismatch.

After a second there was a deep bell tone from the reader and X heard the latch of Robin's door unlock. He was in!


	17. Master thief to super thief part II

X was now inside not only Titans Tower but Robin's room. He stepped inside, all his senses on high alert, open to anything he might encounter there. Nothing was going to escape his notice. He didn't know what to expect of this room. Mad scientist work station? Mini munitions production center? Martial arts dojo in a single room?

What he got was . . . blah. Obsessively clean, neat blah. He was crestfallen. There was a large bed against the center of the wall facing the door, a couple chairs and a table against the wall to the left, a desk and two doors on the right side. There were two small bookcases flanking the bed along with a pair of night tables. The only touch of style of any sort was a poster of a leaping Bruce Lee over the bed. The rest of the room could have been a suite at a cheap motel.

It was all hysterically neat and clean enough to satisfy the worst germaphobe. Every surface had been dusted. Every surface shined. X did a slow walk around the room marveling at the obsessive compulsive order of it. Still, there had to be . . something. Something! He couldn't leave Titans Tower with nothing. But . . this room was so . . blah!

In the single drawer of the table on the left there was a bible, a pencil and pad of note paper. There was a low dresser immediately to one side of the door. X looked in all the drawers. There were identical sets of t-shirts, underpants and socks all perfectly folded as though on a display table at J Crew, not a thread out of place. X went over to the desk, a big one but not ornate or expensive, just pine with several coats of varnish. There was a container of black powder and a birdarang. Okay, that was something. But X was pretty sure he could make a lousy frigging birdarang if he really had to. There weren't any x-ray goggles or bo-staffs or any other sort of weapon in sight. Nothing.

X gave a sigh of disappointment and opened one door. It was the bathroom. Gleaming white tile and reeking of bleach. It was a nice setup with a lot of room and a big tub, without a speck of soap residue, but it was just a bathroom, albeit an obsessively clean one.

He went to try the other door but first he noticed some pencil marks on the white paint of the bathroom door frame. X leaned in close. Are these . . ?

X laughed out loud. The top horizontal pencil mark was just above the level of X's chin and had a date written next to it, just 3 days ago. Underneath it, at varying intervals but around an eighth of an inch between them, were another dozen horizontal lines with dates noted on them. The little bat was desperately chronicling his own glacial rate of growth.

Exasperated at the lack of value in the little bat's room, X grabbed a pencil off the nearby desk. He meticulously erased the highest mark and drew a new straight line an eighth of an inch higher than it had been and copied the same date as before in precisely the same handwriting. Next time the little bat checks, all excited and thinking that he's grown a bit he'll get the disappointing impression that he hasn't grown at all.

That little bit of mischief accomplished, he opened the other door. It was a walk in closet. On the back of the door was a full length mirror. Hanging on the bar to the left closest to the door were two spare Robin uniforms that would fit a guy about five foot six. Past them were a couple pairs of jeans on hangers, a few casual shirts and a tuxedo still in the dry cleaner's plastic. The left side of the closet had nothing but white dress shirts on hangers. On the floor, all neatly lined up, were a pair of perfectly shined dress shoes, a pair of hiking shoes, a pair of hiking boots and a pair of Chuck Taylor Converse all stars.

Blah!

Dammit! Blah! Blah! Blah!

An idea occurred to X giving him momentary hope. A secret compartment! Maybe there was a secret compartment where he had something really interesting hidden!

X pressed his hand against the wall all around the closet. No seams or cracks or handles. He knocked with one knuckle every foot or so. No change in sound. Nothing. There was nothing but what you saw. X sighed, near resignation now. Get in the Tower then even get in the little jerk's room all for . . . nothing?!

X started to wonder if maybe there was a weapons room or something like that somewhere else in the tower. He was drawing new hope from this notion but continued to go through the motions of checking out the boy wonder's room.

All that was left in the closet was the shelf up above where everything was hung. At one end, there were two small piles of identical beige sweaters, in a stack as though the little bat was a new trainee at a store at the mall. There was also a stack that included some workout clothes and a couple swimsuits and then a few waterproof goretex things. X pressed a hand into every pile but felt only more soft fabric until his fingers ran into something hard beneath a goretex jacket.

Hmmph.

He swept it aside revealing a small black briefcase. X pulled it off the shelf and carefully replaced the goretex stuff so that the pile looked just the way it had. He went over to the bed and set the briefcase down. It had some heft. And it was locked. It had a simple, old school style combination lock with three numbered dials. X regarded it skeptically. Really?

He'd try all 999 combinations if he had to. But he thought for a moment. Sure, he'd supposedly left Gotham City with a lot of hard feelings but still . . .

He moved the dials to 6-4-7, as close as you could get to 'bat'. The lock released.

On top of the contents was a white skull mask with a red "X" on it. X's eyes went wide. "Ho . . . ly . . . shit!" he gasped.

He remembered the stories about the villain Red X. Now everything clicked. X remembered seeing footage of Red X. Something had always nagged at the back of his thoughts. Now he realized what it was. Red X was short like Robin with the exact same build. And Red X had that same odd walk as Robin, as though the next step might always be part of a gymnast's tumbling run. He'd always thought Robin had the oddest walk. Fairly smooth but kind of uptight and always suggesting a-a gymnast or an acrobat to X. You noticed that sort of thing as a ballet dancer. You noticed how people pointed their toes and the way they turned their hips, whether they were heel strikers or walked on the front of their feet, all the tiny idiosyncrasies of people's gaits. Ballet was all about displaying almost impossible fluidity. You got used to noticing any deviations from it.

"So . . . Robin was . . Red X?!" he muttered as he took the mask out of the briefcase, only feeling the weight of it and seeing that it was almost an inch thick could he tell that it was not just a mask. Underneath that were a pair of gray gloves. Under those were a pair of black half sock half boot things with a Red X skull and a red "X" on the sole. The sole had some hardness to it but above that they were more like thick socks. X inspected the gloves and boots closely. There was something going on with both pairs. They weren't just gloves and boots. They had extra thickness. He put them aside. Underneath the boots was a uniform top, a stretchy matte black shirt probably too small for him. It also had a cape fixed to the back of the shoulders and a cowl that he stretched out with one hand and figured would cover his head and most of his face. Beneath that were a pair of black pants, more like tights and maybe too narrow even for him. At the very bottom was a utility belt and a book.

X ran the fabric of the top back and forth between his thumb and index finger. It was the weirdest stuff he'd ever felt, like silk and steel had gotten together and this was their baby. It had a matte black finish and was very thin and stretchy but opaque and he felt somehow sure that it would turn out to be incredibly strong. He held it close to his eye and could see that it had tiny filaments, almost like wiring running all through it.

Hmmph.

The uniform pants were the same stuff. Now, the book caught his eye. It was soft bound, 8 inches by 8 inches and 387 pages thick. He rifled his thumb along the pages and stopped randomly at one in the middle. There was a sub heading at the bottom of the page. HARD SHELL MODE. X read a few lines then let the pages slide past his fingers to the cover. The cover was plain white with plain black lettering reading:

IMPACT RESPONSIVE,

NEGATIVE ION INDUCING,

STEALTH MODE OPERATING,

TELEPORTING

XENOTHIUM PLASMA POWERED

BATTLE SUIT

Stealth mode?!

Teleporting? Teleporting?! Tele . . . fucking . . . porting? Are you fucking kidding me?! Seriously?

He clapped his hands. Fuck yeah!

X could not resist. He quickly peeled off his clothes except for his dance belt and pulled on the black uniform pants. The material felt odd against his skin. It was almost like there was electricity going back and forth between his skin and the pants. At first, the uniform bottom seemed too small for him, certainly too short for him at six one with a 35 inch inseam if it had been made for five foot six Robin. But something odd happened it stretched enough to cover him and then, on its own seemed to be moving over his skin, molding exactly to the surface of him.

"Whoa!"

He turned around and inspected himself in the mirror. The pants looked extremely tight but didn't feel restricting at all. They were perfectly form fitting, not bagging or sagging or wrinkling anywhere but giving him the look of a black skin from the waist down.

Hmmph. Okay.

He bounced back and forth from one foot to the other like a fighter before a bout. He felt . . energized. From the waist down he felt energized. His leg muscles felt fantastic.

Hmmph.

He turned back to the bed and the uniform components and picked one boot up off the bed and started to slip his foot into it. It looked too small at first but, again, it seemed to stretch to fit him. And when the top of the boot got near the cuff of the pants, like they were infused with a powerful magnetic attraction, the two pieces practically jumped at each other and formed a tight seal. He tugged at it to test it. He couldn't separate the pants from the footgear.

Hmmph.

X pulled on the other boot and the same thing happened. As soon as the boot and pants were within an inch of each other they jammed together. A powerful magnetic force X figured. Next he pulled on the top. As with the pants, it was incredibly form fitting. If a dime had been squeezed under it you would have been able to read the date on it. And when the hem of the top got close to the waist of the pants the two practically jumped at each other and locked tight.

X flexed his shoulders and twisted his torso this way and that. As absolutely form fitting as the top was he didn't feel restricted at all. He decided to test the pants and dropped into a full split in front of the mirror. As tight as the pants were he didn't feel impeded at all. He did some more ballet stretches and, no matter what, the battle suit accommodated him.

It all felt so . . . natural. The texture of it, the way it almost embraced his body within it and the terrific way his muscles all felt since he put it on. He glanced back at that book title "negative ion inducing" he muttered to himself. Maybe that's it.

He pulled on the gloves and just like the socks they seemed too small at first, certainly for his long fingers, but they almost seemed to stretch to fit him. All that was left was the mask and utility belt. First X pulled the black cowl of the top up over his head. It took a little stretching at first but once he had it in place it left only an oval of his face showing, from just over and to the sides of his eyes to just under his lower lip.

X picked the utility belt out of the case. It was unbuckled. He wrapped it around his waist. The ends just naturally snapped together and there seemed to be a sort of reverse dimple in the front of the top at the waist. It lined up with a dimple in the back of the utility belt and like everything before that the belt just jumped at him and stuck in place.

He raised the mask now, a gloved hand at each side of it, and slowly brought it to his face in a gesture like a king taking his own crown.

An inch away it practically jumped at his face forming a tight seal with the black cowl.

" _Ow!_ "

It didn't fit. It didn't fit. There was an impression of a face on the inside of it but obviously not one that matched the contours of X's face. The little bat had a tiny button nose. The mask seemed to be trying to crush his down to the same ridiculous shape.

" _Ow! What the fuck?!_ "

Not only did the damn thing hurt his face, especially his nose but his voice sounded like it had come from a 1970's computer.

He reached for his throat with both gloves. " _What the hell's with my voice?_ "

There it was again, the voice of the Univac and not the dulcet tones of a Chinese Barry White as X's voice had been characterized by other dancers. And just as he was wondering about this the mask spoke to him in a similar computer voice directed into both his ears.

"Initiate growth spurt adjustment of interior mask contours?" it asked.

" _Yes, dammit_ ," X responded, unsure of just what that meant and irritated that his very deep natural voice was somehow being turned into this ugly computer sound. But he quickly forgot about what was being done to his voice as his face was not only being squeezed painfully but got hotter and hotter and hotter till he thought he might be going to get burns across his face from the mask. The damn thing had heated up to the very edge of what he could endure. What the fuck?!

But after a few seconds of this, the contours of the inside of the mask became malleable and the whole thing reshaped to exactly fit X's face. He closed his eyes and mouth and remained absolutely still figuring that this would be the best thing and after 30 seconds the heat started dissipating. After a minute the damn thing was perfectly molded to him and wasn't hot at all.

" _What'd it say? Growth spurt adjustment_?" muttered X, this too coming out as the idle musing of something worked on by Alan Turing. It all made sense. The pants seemed too small even for X's little waist. They seemed too short as did the sleeves. But the little bat with his fixation on eventually having a growth spurt had set the whole suit up to accommodate him if it ever happened. Instead, it accommodates me!

With all these irritations now out of the way X noticed that he could see displays at the lower corners of his peripheral vision. The ones at the lower left edge of what he could see with his left eye were neon green and seemed to all have to do with outside conditions.

70°F

42%Humidity

30.12"BP

11:17:41 a.m. pst

At the lower right edge of what his right eye could see, the displays were in neon red and were focused on the suit.

96.4%Energy Reserves

0.1%Circuit impairment

99.7%Impact response integrity

90%Multifunctional gel available

Hmm.

He would study all these things till he had mastered their import but first, he knew it was childish but he couldn't resist. Teleporting! He had to try this teleporting.

" _Um . . computer?_ " he tried, summoning the brain of the suit from wherever it was in the mask. I sound like one of its brethren, don't I, thought X.

"Yes?" came the answer in his ears in a similarly synthetic voice.

" _Computer, I'd like to teleport to the nearest spot I can. Where is that?_ "

"Node 7 at the base of Titans Tower."

" _Computer, um . . . initiate, um, teleportation to node 7,_ " commanded X.

"Initiating," said the computer voice into both his ears and the next thing X new his body was trying to shake apart. This was unlike anything he'd felt before in his life. Every part of him was vibrating as thought it was going to come apart as though every part of him would come loose from every other part of him and all that would be left would be a heap of his body parts on the carpet of this room, fingers next to eyeballs on top of one side of his butt on top of his toes. He had no idea how long this process took. It was disorienting. All of his senses seemed to have gone haywire. He saw only a white flash. His ears were filled with hard static. He didn't smell anything and he felt as though his body was either imploding or exploding. He wasn't quite sure. Maybe one then the other. He felt dizzy.

The next thing he knew he was standing on a concrete landing outside the entrance to the Tower, going into a slight crouch as though he'd been dropped there and was regaining his balance.

" _Wh-wh-whoa!_ " he gasped, feeling like the air had been sucked out of his lungs. " _That was amazing!_ "

A glance at the lower left of what he could see showed one second had elapsed. It seemed like more. But it worked! It actually worked! He looked up at the T shaped building. He'd been up there, 13 stories up there just a second ago and now he he was here from teleporting! Holy shit!

" _Computer! teleport back to previous position_ ," commanded X in the annoying computer voice.

"Initiating," said the computer's voice into his ears and X felt the same incredible sensations but this time with some of the edge of fear taken off but he heard static, saw a white flash and felt vibration as though his body would fall apart and then, suddenly, he was back in Robin's room.

He almost lost his balance again, suddenly feeling his weight on his feet in the middle of Robin's room and found himself gasping for breath again. But it worked. It worked and this was something he'd be able to do.

Oh. Yeah.

He grinned beneath the skull mask. You think you've got a kick ass security system and a lot of guards, do you Rothschilds? Well I can teleport right the fuck past them all now!

After a profane gesture toward the absent Rothschilds, X returned to a more calculating frame of mind. He checked the central compartment of the belt. There was a hard metal face that could be flipped open. Inside he saw four tubes each about two inches high and a half inch around. Three of the tubes were filled with a red . . gas . . liquid? It was hard to tell. Plasma, he corrected himself, remembering the book's cover. He looked at it again. Xenothium plasma powered battle suit. One of the tubes was a little over half filled. The display at the lower right edge of his vision now read 91.3% Energy Reserves. So the two teleports had eaten up around 5% of his power.

He looked in the briefcase. There were two more full tubes of the reddish, almost pulsing Xenothium plasma tubes. X spent a few minutes looking around the room but didn't find any more. He flipped through the book and saw a diagram showing that, on the underside of the cape was a sort of super velcro'd enclosure that he could put things in. He got his own clothes and stuffed them in the briefcase ready to slide it into the pouch on the underside of the cape.

He flipped through the book quickly, suddenly feeling a sense of urgency that he should get the hell out with this tremendous, career making haul.

He looked around the room again wondering if there were any more Xenothium plasma tubes but a quick, just short of frantic, search didn't find any.

He sighed. Okay. One more thing that has to be tried. Stealth mode operating? He went back to the book and found it. There was a very complex scientific explanation but he understood the big picture meaning of it all. He stuffed the book back into the briefcase with his clothes and got it into the pouch on the underside of the cape. He went over to stand in front of the full length mirror.

" _Computer_ ," he began, still annoyed at what was being done to his voice, " _Switch to stealth operation mode._ "

" _Initiating_ ," said the computer voice into his ears. And then an amazing thing happened. In just over a second, first his entire mask and then random tiny pieces of the rest of his uniform seemed to turn silvery or almost reflect light like water. Then they weren't there. One second he was looking at his beloved new battle suit and skull mask. The next his head reflected like water and then increasingly the rest of him almost as though his image were made of pixels on a screen and they were randomly chosen to display as a water surface and then not at all. He was looking at himself in the mirror but there was nothing blocking the reflection of Robin's bed and the Bruce Lee poster on the wall. X patted his own chest and then gave a slap to his hip. He was there. He was real. He was also invisible.

" _Oh fucking yeah!_ " X shouted, the sound coming out like the cry of joy of something hosting the cloud. He was gonna have to fix the voice thing ASAP. But he tidied up Robin's room and then slipped out. He went back to Beast Boy's room and closed his window and tried to push the piles of clutter into roughly the same locations as they were probably in when he jumped through the window. He slipped out of Beast Boy's room and went to the kitchen where he made sure to return the dishes to the exact locations they'd been in before his arrival. He shook his skull masked head at the plate of tiny eyeballs. Damn, Starfire.

Still in stealth mode, X took the elevator down to the ground floor, got out and sent it back up to 14 where he thought it had been before he'd pressed for it on 13. Then he walked right out the door of Titans Tower and down to the water's edge. He found his kayak and paddled back to the shore by his hotel. He walked right into the lobby, right past 15 or 20 people without anyone batting an eyelash or taking the slightest notice of him.

This walking while invisible was a little tricky. You didn't look at your own feet while you walked but it was still a little freaky to stride along without seeing yourself at all.

X got into the elevator with an older married couple. They had no idea he was there. The stealth mode feature worked perfectly. X grinned like the cheshire cat underneath the skull mask. Unlike the cheshire cat, his grin didn't show up. Nothing did. Between the teleporting and this . . !

At his door, X retrieved the briefcase from under the cape. If anyone had come down the hallway they would have seen the briefcase suddenly appearing out of thin air and opening up and the swipe key being removed from it. Safe inside his room, X told the computer to turn off stealth mode. He saw his body in the black of the suit and the white of the skull mask. He got out his laptop computer and typed a review to the latest chapter of Park's dummy story on Fanfiction. Park put no effort into it at all and it was mostly ignored with the occasional review flaming him for putting out such a shitty story. X wrote a review in the code that he and Park had agreed on telling Park that he should contact him right away.

X went to sleep in his new battle suit dreaming of all the wrongs he was going to right.


	18. A master thief boy and his new toy

X woke the next morning after what felt like the most refreshing sleep of his life. Every muscle in his body felt simultaneously soothed and energized. He felt great. He simply lay down atop the end of the hotel bed without recourse to pillows or covers and with his feet still on the floor. He snapped awake like you sometimes saw little kids get up, instantly alert, so excited for the adventure of the next day.

He was half way to the bathroom when he realized, upon scratching himself, that he still had the suit on. It felt so completely natural. But as he sauntered into the bathroom he realized that he couldn't do his business while wearing it. He marched back to the desk on one side of the hotel room where the book lay open on a blotter with the hotel's name across it.

X flipped through the appendix till he found the right heading.

Disrobing 41-43

He flipped to page 41 and read that mini chapter. Okay.

" _Computer. Disrobing,_ " he announced, vexed anew at how his deep voice was turned into something that sounded like it came from a 1970's computer. As soon as he said the phrase, all the electromagnetic bonds between the different parts of the suit let go. X stripped and went to the bathroom, did his business, showered and shaved.

Other than apartment hunting for a couple hours in his regular clothes, stopping by the Jump City Ballet's offices and doing one of his ballet stretches every hour or so, for the next three days, X did nothing but read the 387 page owner's manual and try out the suit's features. X was utterly fascinated. He was like a little kid who'd gotten the greatest Christmas gift ever and was going to do nothing but use it all the way into the new year.

The more he read, the more detail there seemed to be and the more he loved it. And now the suit was immediately a perfect fit for his slender six foot one physique every time. He didn't feel awkward or encumbered or limited in any way wearing it. It felt natural. It was him. At one point, he stopped poring over the owner's manual and just sighed with a grin looking toward the ceiling. The thought that was in his head was, "It was so right to stay in Jump to make this happen," and the unspoken sense of things that he had was that he'd been right, that this _was_ his destiny.

How could anyone stop him when he was wearing this suit? It was incredible tech. Somewhere in the back of the book it said that the thing weighed three pounds total this impact responsive, negative ion inducing, stealth mode operating, teleporting, xenothium plasma powered battle suit. It felt like it weighed nothing. X felt energized wearing the suit.

And he could customize the suit in dozens of ways. For one thing, the voice modification that had so annoyed him was one of a half dozen choices. As the book listed them, the suit wearer's voice could be heard in the following settings: Natural, Computer, Extra Deep, Extra High, Static Scrambled and Distant Echo. X tried all of them and quickly settled on Extra Deep which took his already very deep voice and went a step further, having it come out a full octave lower than it was naturally.

He also found that he could choose the voice of the computer running the suit's functions. The little bat had left it at the computer sounding setting. But, in the manual, X read that he could have just about anyone's voice as the voice of the suit talking to him. It took X just a little looking around on line to find that there were places to get the voice of just about any celebrity who had spoken more than a few lines in public. There were programs that could take every movie and tv utterance of, say, oh . . . Scarlett Johansson and if there were words that she hadn't spoken, they could be formed from her saying the constituent syllables in other words. X made Scarlett Johannson the voice within his ears in the suit.

But he also found that he could avoid talking to her and yet still trigger just about every function of the suit. A series of five and six fingertip presses in sequence would start or stop virtually all the suit's functions. They had to be relatively quick and they had to be firm and against the palm of either his right or left hand so that his simply gripping something with his gloves wasn't going to set off some unintended feature. For instance, pressing the index, index, ring, middle and index fingers of one hand to the palm of the glove would switch the normal, opaque from the outside lenses of the mask to still opaque but now long distance vision lenses. Pressing his middle, middle, index, middle and ring fingers turned on the suit's stealth mode.

After reading straight through the book once, X went over most of the chapters again in the order that the inspiration struck him. He knew that negative ions, despite the connotation of the phrase, were very good for you. The book described how the suit, through a very complex creation of electromagnetic fields in the suit material, would create negative ions in the wearer. It would help protect the wearer from diseases, make him heal faster and make him feel more fit. Further, the manual claimed that he actually would be more fit, that he would be stronger.

Hmmph, thought X. I gotta try that.

So, late at night, X went down to the hotel's fitness center wearing the suit in stealth mode. Along with treadmills, bikes and elliptical machines the hotel's fitness center had some free weights. 164 pound X was very proud that he could bench press more than his weight the couple times he'd tried, joking around with some other guys at the Hong Kong Ballet. X had benched 225 pounds. Wearing the Red X suit, X set the bar up on the bench press stand with 250 pounds and then settled under it. To his surprise, X did a couple reps almost easily. He laughed and added 15 more pounds to each side of the bar. 280 pounds total now. X grunted and it wasn't easy but he could do it. He benched 280 four times before getting up from the bench with a laugh and a slap of his own chest. More than one and a half times his body weight. Pretty damn good for a guy who didn't try to work on his bench press at all. He did even better at squats though this wasn't entirely surprising with his amazing leaping ability.

By the second day of this crash course of familiarization with the suit and its capabilities, X was starting to feel an almost awed admiration for Robin. What an amazing thing to have put together this suit! My god.

But then he saw the mention in the footnote on page 194. How had he not noticed it before? Had he skimmed over the footnotes too quickly? It was at the bottom of the last page of the chapter on the suit's teleporting function. It said that if the vibrational instigation mechanism was malfunctioning that the Martian Manhunter should be consulted as he'd built it.

X did a double take. He hadn't noticed that the first time through the book.

And then he saw the mention in the footnote on page 287 and the one on page 351 of how the stealth function and the xenothium plasma power system were the work of Justice League genius Mr. Terrific. The foam in the gloves that could be shot as a glue or an explosive or as an incendiary to start fires depending upon how the base material was charged and stimulated as it was expelled, had been the work of Elongated Man Ralph Dibny. There was also a reference in the description of the impact response feature of the fabric to it being a copy of Batman's uniform.

X's admiration became less and less till he came to regard the Boy Wonder like some rap artist who hadn't really written anything but who had "sampled" every melody, every hook in his hits from Philly International artists from the 1970's.

Who's the thief?

X tried out all the suit's features again, going into the ghetto section of Jump City to shoot exploding shurrikens at abandoned buildings. But there was still one last primary feature of the suit that he hadn't tried, the impact response. X read the chapter describing how the suit defended against impacts a few times. It was full of dense jargon, phrases like "instantaneous velocity of distortion of biometric parameters" and "electro-indurate reaction". X didn't understand all of it but he got the gist of it. If someone hit him, the suit would detect that force was being applied at, say, his solar plexus from the accelerated distortion of the suit at that location and would stiffen at the point of impact so quickly as to partially block the blow by increasing the electric charge passing through the fabric at that point and thereby making it stiffer.

X had picked a stick out of the brush fringing the hotel when he'd gone out to visit the Jump City Ballet's offices. It was just the size of a good Tang Soo Do fighting stick.

He pressed it slowly to his thigh just above the knee. The suit offered no resistance. He tried just a little quicker, no more firm than a light slap. The suit felt . . . maybe a little stiffer at that spot. He wasn't sure.

X considered this test and sighed at the unavoidable conclusion. There was only one place where he would be so sensitive that he would be absolutely sure how much the suit was protecting against impact. He shook his head glancing down. This was fodder for some stupid ass home video show if it didn't work.

He gently pressed the end of the stick to the conspicuous hemispheric bulge of his equipment under the matte black suit. Nothing. The suit didn't do anything as he pressed harder. It wasn't any different than if he'd pressed it against the front of his ballet tights.

Deep breath.

He took a serious half swing downward at his big black package.

TOK!

The stick seemed to bounce off. He wasn't left clutching at his crotch and sinking to his knees. He wasn't hurt at all.

"Holy shit! It worked."

It was like the stick had bounced off metal. The suit had just barely indented, just a millimeter or two, but then hardened at the spot of impact and the blow had made a noise like the stick had hit metal.

X grinned beneath the skull mask. The magnitude of the impact response was limited but he'd be able to get in a fight with a serious opponent and seem to take a certain amount of punishment from them while actually only feeling a fraction of that because the suit had absorbed a lot of the force of each blow.

The suit was so fantastic that X was left to wonder, why the hell isn't the little bat wearing this instead of his stupid traffic light suit? But then X realized the obvious answer. Duh! He's probably incorporated almost all the suit's features into his own uniform. Batman, too! Wouldn't it be just like the Bat to have all these abilities built into his uniform but never tell you? Teleporting. Going invisible. Of course he's using them! How the hell does he sneak up on people all the time? How does he fight multiple guys at one time without ever losing? How the hell does he get out of some of those situations?

X burst out laughing. Of course! Superman's up front about it all. Hey, I've got laser vision. I can fly. But what's better, to have abilities and everyone knows it or to have them without anyone being quite aware of it? The Bat knows what he's doing.

X went to sleep the next couple days wearing the Red X suit, on the latter day glancing out the hotel room window at Titans Tower in the distance with a few lights visible in the top floor, surprised that only now had he realized that they were back. He hadn't thought of the danger that they were back and that maybe Robin had a way to track the suit and find him. X's sense of this being his destiny was so complete that he dismissed the possibility. He hadn't found anything in the book about tracking the suit or it sending signals to the Tower or any such thing.

As he slipped into another soothing and energizing sleep, X reassured himself that the little bat might still not realize the suit was even gone.

He was wrong.

Robin had realized that something was amiss within 10 seconds of coming down from the roof to the 14th floor with the others. He saw a tiny piece of pink tape on the floor next to the seat at the communications center. He stopped in mid stride. He went rigid a second then, head on a swivel, shot glances all around them. This wasn't theirs! This tape didn't come from any of their dispensers! He knew. He refilled them all himself.

He stepped forward and grabbed it with a shout. The others laughed at him initially. They just wanted to go back to their rooms. Oh, you're just being captain uptight again. Yadda yadda yadda. But there it was, next to the waste basket under the desk at the communications center, a quarter inch long piece of that quick molding tape that serious thieves, real pros used to match fingerprints.

"What's this here?!" he'd shouted loud enough that the others could all hear him as they were walking away. They all rolled their eyes. "Um, a piece of tape," Raven had deadpanned.

"No! It's not just a piece of tape!" he'd shrieked and gone on to explain, at the top of his lungs, what kind of special tape it was and just what it meant. "Someone broke into Titans Tower!" he yelled in conclusion. "Someone broke into our home!"

And with the others finally shocked into a mild degree of seriousness about what had happened, a epiphany came to him. Of course! He marched out of the great room toward the elevator doors on the 14th floor. No matter how many times I tell him. He still does it. "It's easier to fly out if I make myself into a bird, dude!" he'd whine. "Birds don't open windows." The others reflexively followed.

"And I bet I know how he got in!" declared Robin at a slightly lower decibel level but with his energy channeled into a seething mad tone of voice. They all took the elevator down and he led them to Beast Boy's door. "Open it!" he shouted to the changeling. As soon as the green teen did, Robin threw out his arm pointing to the window. "See! You . . . oh. It's closed." The others all looked in the doorway and saw the closed window, just as X had quite consciously left it.

"Oh! So, you were all set to jump on the green dude without even knowing what the real story was. Well, that's a fine show of being a teammate. Maybe we should blame the guy in charge of security for us being broken in on. And who's that? Oh, right. You, Captain Uptight."

He'd had to apologize to Beast Boy, which he hated, not because it was Beast Boy but because he hated ambivalence, mixed feelings, a lack of purity of focus. And this need to be apologetic was contrasting to the furious anger he felt about the situation. But anger became completely dominant when he led the others back into the hall to his door. "Look!" he shouted pointing at his print reader. The others just shrugged. He groaned. Weren't they up on any of this?!

"There are fingerprints on it!" he shouted, pointing to the faint marks on the shiny surface.

"Uh, it's a fingerprint reader, Rob," said Cyborg. "You didn't want us to have retinal scanners because you'd have to take your mask off."

"But I wipe mine after every single time I use it! Someone used the special fast molding tape and copied my fingerprints and got into my room! Myyyyyyyy room!"

"Dude, you're gonna burst a bat blood vessel or something."

He shot an angry glance at Beast Boy then put his hand on the reader and flung the door open. He marched into his room yanking open drawers and doors, frantically searching and then feeling under one of the piles on the shelf in the closet and, instead of the special briefcase, finding . . . nothing!

"The Red X suit! Someone stole the Red X suit!" he said, feeling complete vindication now for all the anger and bombast leading up to this. But the others all shot back their predictable little remarks.

"Oh, the suit that you made and then used to fight us, dude?"

"Oh, you mean the suit you made to infiltrate the outfit of the Slade but did not trust us to tell us, your teammates, what you were doing? That is the suit that you mean?"

It was all ruined. The feeling he should have had about this. It was all swirled around with their resentments and so he never got to go through it all naturally. It would have been quicker. Instead, a week later his emotions were still set on light seethe while attending this charity thing, this "Jump Arts!" thing. He always represented the group at things like this that were city wide where all the institutions of Jump City were supposed to be represented. But this one was supposed to be saluting minority participation in the arts so Cyborg was there, too.

It'd be the usual thing, Robin explained to Cyborg as he drove them to City Hall in the T car. It was all about getting some rich people to donate money to the Jump City Opera and the Jump City Symphony and the Jump City Ballet and the Jump City Playhouse. Hey, rich people! Donate some money! And the special angle to the promotion this time was to salute members of minority groups, blacks, asians, women and who knew who else who performed for those institutions.

Robin and Cyborg got there early and went through the usual introductions to the mayor and his staff and all the executives at the various arts institutions of Jump City. There was the jealous police chief and the gushing female staff and that creepy executive assistant to the deputy mayor dude who Robin was sure wanted to jump his bones. But he was a pro at deflecting all this attention now and some of it was going to Cyborg so he dealt with it pretty easily.

After they'd stopped being the focus of everyone's attention, Robin fell into his usual habit of threat assessment of everyone he met as Batman had taught him. It was an automatic response for Robin. He fell into it without thinking, not because he thought the minority members of the Jump City Symphony string section were a threat. He just did it, all the time. A short black violinist was introduced to him. At just a glance, Robin saw that the guy was in his late 20's, the same height as him, but from those jowls and that puffy face at least 40 pounds heavier and from the way he filled out his tuxedo, relatively wide hipped but with minimal glutes and calves, a pot belly, chicken wing shoulder blades. Almost zero physical threat and a klutzy, awkward gait. Batman had taught him how science let him infer almost everything about a guy's body and athleticism from just a few glimpses of him walking and seeing what little of him that might show beyond a tuxedo and how he filled out that tuxedo. The same went for a gang of thugs all in leather jackets or overcoats. It was extremely valuable to quickly figure out which guy was going to be the alpha dog fighting you. Take him out first.

What a wimpy, unathletic bunch, cellists and tenors and actors. One hispanic guy, an actor, might've had a little bit of ability to defend himself. The others were all hopeless. And then that ballet dude walked in. Robin rolled his eyes and glanced at Cyborg. Can you believe this?

The guy was Chinese. Robin knew how to distinguish Koreans from Japanese from Filipinos from Malays from Vietnamese from Chinese. He was Chinese. And in any fight this was the first guy Robin would have gone after. Fine. The dude was fantastic. Tall, slender but incredibly well conditioned with good strong shoulders tapering down to a small waist and . . Robin shook his head. Ballet! Did the guy need to . . ?! Did he really have to . . ?! Fine. He's got an amazing set of glutes. Probably incredible hip flexors, too. Does he have to wear white tights like that to show himself off to everyone? God, freaking ballet.

What was it with guys like this or that flake Kid Flash who desperately wanted to show themselves off to everyone? Look at me! Look at me! Fine, this guy's got the excuse that he's a sissy boy ballet dancer but was there really no way they could have given him a top that covered his butt? Really?

Robin forced a deep sigh and reminded himself not to show any discomfort with gay artist types. Not gonna let anyone get started with any of that stuff about being uptight. Nope. They're all thinking it but I'm not gonna give 'em anything at all.

The guy walked up to him with a sort of smirk on his face and Robin shook his hand just like would a normal guy who didn't have a huge bulge at his crotch right there in public! To Robin's surprise, the guy had a very deep voice and nothing at all about him seemed like the sissy boy type that Robin expected. The guy explained to him and Cyborg that there was supposed to be a ballerina there with him. They weren't sure where she was. Might have been a traffic accident. After some of the guys and gals from the symphony played a bit and this black tenor sang and this hispanic woman soprano sang he was supposed to dance with the ballerina. They were going to do a "pas de deux", whatever that was, from some classic ballet but to part of Tiny Dancer by Elton John, to show they didn't just dance to Tchaikovsky. The guy said that it fit the Elton John song perfectly. Robin just nodded. Okay, whatever.

Then the mayor directed people to stand here and there in certain spots. He put the ballet dude in white tights next to him. To Robin's exasperation, the female staff at City Hall and that executive assistant to the deputy mayor dude were all over him, practically drooling on him. Robin rolled his eyes in a glance to Cyborg, disapproving of both sides of this. Okay, he's a complete pretty boy but come on. Control yourselves. And, glancing down at the guy's practically exposed backside, right next to him, wondered again if there was any good reason why that red velvet top couldn't extend lower?

Then the ceremonies began and the symphony guys played and the opera guys sang and a couple of the actors even acted out a scene. As they were finishing, the ballet dude looked to Robin and muttered, "Hey, you're just about the same size as the ballerina who I was supposed to dance with . . "

Robin didn't even look at the guy. He wasn't gonna look at a dude in ridiculous tights and accidentally smirk when everyone was looking that way. So he didn't even see it start, he just felt it. The guy had pulled on his cape behind him and secured it under the back of his utility belt.

He heard the guy whisper "Just play along! Don't react or everyone will think you're a raging homophobe! Now, make your body rigid and lift your left leg straight back of you!"

The next thing Robin knew, just as the song Tiny Dancer, was coming over the speakers, he was being lifted high in the air by the Chinese pretty boy who was even stronger than he would have guessed.

For the next minute, the pretty boy in tights hastily muttered a series of instructions to him as he carried him around the grand open space of City Hall, holding him up, circling him as Robin stood with all his weight on the toes of one foot, tossing him in the air and catching him in a sort of a deep bow. Robin was furious but couldn't figure a graceful way to force the dude to put him down. Finally, the music stopped and the Chinese ballet dude had spun him around to face the rest of the attendees. Robin knew how embarrassing it must have looked from Cyborg's open jawed expression. of shock. The attendees burst into surprised, almost laughing applause.

Robin wanted to kill that Chinese ballet dude. Instead, one of the Jump City local news anchors was on hand and immediately approached them and Robin had to put on a polite face as best he could. Worse still, the Chinese dude thought it was all tremendously funny and joked with the ditzy anchor that "The Boy Wonder would make one heck of a good little ballerina. We'll get him a tutu and a tiara," he said and patted the top of Robin's head so hard that he flattened out the gelled spikes.

Robin could not remember what, if anything, he'd said to the ditzy anchor when she asked him a question. All through the ride back to the Tower he felt like a powder keg just waiting to go off. There was the underlying anger at the Red X suit being stolen and now this humiliation thanks to some Chinese ballet dude. He ground his teeth together as hard as humanly possibly the whole ride back constantly monitoring Cyborg out of the corner of his eye to see if he'd make fun of him.

But Cyborg knew his touchy teammate too well and said nothing. He was quite sure his teammates would take care of it for him. Sure enough, when they got back to the Tower, the others said nothing and put up blase fronts as if they didn't know but Beast Boy cast one smirking glance at him that told him otherwise. When Robin got to the door of his room there were a tutu and a tiara, both Starfire's, glued to it.

From up in the kitchen on the 14th floor, the other four could still clearly hear his half grunt half scream and then the slam of his door behind him.


	19. Gearing up

X felt a tap on his shoulder and then a tug at his white t-shirt. He was in the second floor studio of the Jump City Ballet, overlooking a busy city intersection, doing his barre work to piano accompaniment like all the other guys in the JCB but the ballet master had noticed that something was off.

"Are you okay, X? You don't seem like yourself these last couple days."

X nodded and gave a smile that said he was fine. He was. But while some of the male and female dancers constantly communicated that they abhorred morning class and considered it drudgery, X had always liked it. X loved the ballet dancer's life that was the official version of him that the whole world saw. X usually grinned and joked with other dancers throughout class, lifting everyone's spirits.

Jump City Ballet had brought on artists from other companies before who had been miserable personalities, bitching and complaining at every turn, imagining slights, making minutes seem like hours. When their contracts were up, JCB dropped them. A ballet company is a bit like a team. A player who makes it harder for everyone else on the team to do their best is not good to have around. But not only did X immediately justify his hiring with eye popping performances, including leaps and spins and all around athleticism in his roles that audiences and critics had never seen. He was also a consistently positive presence in the studio.

The last couple days he'd been quiet.

There was nothing wrong with Xavier Li mentally or physically. He was simply preoccupied. He couldn't stop thinking about his new Red X suit and what he could do with it. He was not going to make any stupid mistake and be caught in the act of robbing Goldman Sachs or J.P. Morgan or HSBC. And he was not going to leave a trail that somehow led back to him. He had a golden, once in a lifetime opportunity now to bring justice to the evil banks who were effectively above justice. And he wasn't going to blow it.

After ballet class each morning and rehearsal each afternoon with his new employer, Jump City Ballet, he would don the absolutely form fitting black suit and skull mask, as tight as any of his ballet costumes, and master its capabilities and plan. Of course, the negative ions that the suit induced in his body also helped him recover from all the ballet work. So there was that reason to put the suit on, too.

But, mostly, X wanted to be sure that he did this right. He was gonna get everything planned out and make the smart play.

X could just imagine the old man slapping him upside the head if he'd immediately gone off robbing banks using the suit. "You think you're so great that you can't be beat but that's what _gets_ you beat, boy! You have to know what the banks and the cops are going to do in response to you and plan to be a step ahead of that response to begin with."

So that's what X was doing, not just using the fantastic new suit right away, as much as he wanted to. He asked himself over and over, "What will the cops do after they find out what I've done? How will they respond?"

In his mind, X likened what he was doing now to some roles he'd danced. There were some roles where a guy might do nothing for what seemed like forever and be called upon to suddenly explode in a burst of energy leaping around the stage as though he'd been warming up for those leaps for the past 15 minutes. X used to visualize the energy building up inside him till the pressure was almost too much to bear then finally converting it all into leaps and spins.

There were a few minor releases of this energy, this desire to go into action as Red X. X started his plan by putting on the suit, turning on stealth mode and going out into the streets of Jump City and establishing teleportation nodes all over. It wasn't hard. He just had to go to a spot, say on a street corner near a big bank, and say "Computer. Establish a teleportation node in this location."

The computer would respond, in the voice of Scarlett Johansson, X's choice for all its communications with him, "Establishing teleport node number 37. Maintain location for 10 seconds. Commencing . . now." X would feel a weird vibration through his whole body, a lesser version of what teleporting actually felt like, and there would be a sound, like a phone vibrating only deeper, because it was all of 164 pound X vibrating and not just some little phone. And then a series of coordinates in three dimensions would flash in red across his vision in the skull mask. The location of teleport node number 37. It was done.

He set up three within range of each of the big banks in the Jump City financial district and two within range of each of the mansions of the top executives of those banks. He threw in another dozen for good measure throughout the city.

He was in the process of doing this, at dusk one evening, in the canyon of streets just beyond the financial district, when he heard a woman's scream echoing from skyscraper walls somewhere nearby. Still invisible, Red X turned and ran in that general direction. He heard another muffled scream and realized where it was coming from. He loped down an alley, enjoying the feeling of how well he could run in the suit, and in the darkness saw two thugs mugging a woman in a business suit, one holding her from behind and the other first hitting her then frisking her. He ran up to them and with the force of his momentum behind it threw an overhand right at the one who'd hit her knocking him out on the spot, the much bigger thug slumping to the pavement with a groan.

The woman squirmed free of the other and started running out of the alley. The still standing thug was momentarily stunned that something he couldn't see had knocked out his partner but quickly recovered and chased after their intended victim. He had almost caught up to her when he felt a strong tug at his shoulder. He was spun half way around and off balance and then knocked out by a force he never saw, dropping to the pavement like a sack of potatoes as had his partner.

The woman heard the noise, looked over her shoulder, and slowed to a stop.

"What the . . . ?! Ohmygod! Ohmygod! Ohmy . . . !"

She stood there gasping in wonder a few seconds that an unseen force had somehow saved her. Then her perplexed expression changed to a grin. She understood.

"Thank you, Kid Flash!" she shouted as she whirled around in circles to try to catch a glimpse of the presumed unseen speedster. "Thank you, Kid Flash! Thank you!"

Five feet away from her, a still invisible Red X shook his head in disgust. Kid Flash?! Really?! Wouldn't you at least see a blur of color if it was him? Red X sighed and went back to establishing teleport nodes.

He got over his disappointment at a lack of credit for a bit of hero work. He wasn't cut out for that sort of hero-ing anyway. And he still had prepping to do before he started going after the too big to fail banks.

A big part of that preparation was laying in some reserves of xenothium plasma. The red gas/fluid in the little vials that powered the suit was more than half gone from all his training. He needed to get some more. It was hard stuff to find. Not quite radioactive but certainly the viable basis for a very powerful explosive device, xenothium was locked up tight, everywhere it could be found.

X spent days trying to figure out how he could get his hands on some xenothium plasma. While working on that problem, he contacted his buddy Park in their usual way, by leaving a coded review on Park's dummy story on Fanfiction using one of the ballerinas' unprotected mini laptop. Two days later Park was in Jump City. Backstage at the ballet, a delivery guy came up to X and handed him a bouquet of a dozen roses. A couple of the nearby ballerinas laughed.

"Some rich guy who wants to buy his way on top of you, X?" snickered one while giving X a pat on the derriere.

X just rolled his eyes. He put aside the bouquet but kept the card that went with it. It said

to:

the

 **M** ost

 **M** agnificent

 **A** sian dancer

from:

SM

and hearts were drawn all around the edges of it. X rolled his eyes and nodded. Korea born Park's username on fanfiction was SeoulMan. SM. And he knew that there was a big Mixed Martial Arts fight event in Jump City that night. He tucked the card under the quilted velvet top of his costume.

Three and a half hours later, Park was underneath the stands of the Jump City auditorium, where the MMA fights were being held. He knew roughly when the ballet was supposed to end and, allowing X the usual time to suck up to the super rich patrons of the ballet, he was due there any time now.

Over to one side a couple teenage kids were mock fighting, arguing what a favorite of theirs who'd lost an undercard fight should have done. "Ground and then arm bar! Arm bar!" Over to the other side a knot of kids was laughing and shouting and letting off steam, imitating how their guy had beat an opponent apparently giving a woozy opponent a knee to the jaw.

Park steered clear of them and everyone else. He chuckled at how wired they were. You'd think they were all about to enter the octagon themselves. He projected an innocuous presence. As far as anyone could tell he was just some lone skinny, young asian guy in jeans and an old t-shirt.

He was standing all alone beside a concrete column looking for X approaching when someone bumped into him, hitting the back of his knee, staggering him. He spun. "Hey, asshole, watch where . . "

But there was no one there. He looked around the side of the concrete column behind him but didn't see anyone there either. What the . .?!

He shrugged it off and glanced at his watch. There's no way X didn't figure it out, right?

"Unnh!" Park was shoved from behind and thrown forward, catching himself with both hands on the concrete floor in front of him.

"Hey, what the fuck!" he snapped rising back up immediately and spinning around. The kids off to one side of the area under the stands were snickering but they were too far away to have done anything. Everyone was. Park scanned all around him but there was no one there.

"Okay, what the fuck?" Park muttered to himself, squinting and scanning all around again as more people were drifting into the area as another fight had just ended.

"Figure it out," whispered a voice in his ear and then Park stopped, head tilted to one side lips curled in a knowing smile. The voice had been X's. Park casually glanced around. There was no one within 30 feet of him.

"Think about it," came X's voice again, this time from over Park's right shoulder but when he looked, there was no one there.

"Could you just tell me, miyou? Cuz I don't know how you're there but I can't see you."

X's disembodied voice told Park to leave the building using the exit to his left and march straight to Jump Park.

X's pal did just as he was told, walking briskly out of there, past a couple parking garages and through a few blocks of empty office towers to the edge of 50 acre Jump Park.

"Go down to the little clearing surrounding the fountain," commanded X's voice. Park did as he was told and stopped in the secluded area next to the fountain.

X worked the controls and turned off the stealth function. Suddenly, there he was in the absolutely form fitting Red X suit, five feet in front of Park.

"Dude? That's you in there?"

X nodded and then also flipped up the mask to show his smirking face before flipping it back down.

"Miyou, you're . . Red X?"

"I am now," said X taking a step closer to Park.

"What do you mean you are now?"

"I think Robin was before. I think he was trying to pull a trick on Slade making himself into this new badass villain, Red X, to get in tight with Slade or something."

"Wait, if this suit was Robin's, how does it fit you?"

"Well, it's tight. But I think it's supposed to be. And I think he set it up so that if he had a growth spurt it would accommodate him. Instead it works for me."

"So . . . you can be invisible wearing that suit?"

X nodded and then went back into stealth mode. He disappeared.

"Holy shit, X. That's awesome. You know what kind of damage you can do in your job, I mean your other job, if you're invisible?"

X turned off the stealth function, reappearing in front of Park. "I can teleport, too."

"What, no fucking way! Seriously?"

X nodded. Park couldn't see his grin under the mask. "I'm not gonna show you that because it uses a lot of juice."

"But, miyou. You said this suit was Robin's. How did you get it?"

"I broke into Titans Tower and I stole it from him. I left the Hong Kong Ballet, too. I dance for Jump City Ballet now. And-"

"You what?!" Park nearly screamed.

"I said I left the Hong Kong Ballet and now I dance for JCB. Look, I know they were good to me. They gave me a clear path up from corps to soloist and they appreciated what I can do but so does JCB. So-"

"You know that's not what I'm talking about. You broke into Titans fucking Tower?! Seriously?!"

X nodded. "It was pretty easy, actually."

"Dude! What happened to the cold, calculating X I knew?"

"I still am, Park. That was a month ago. I've been planning ever since. But I saw an opening. There was an opportunity and I went for it."

X spent the next couple minutes explaining to Park how he watched the Tower and how he broke in when the Titans all went off somewhere. When he was done, Park's opinion had barely changed.

"X, miyou, that was crazy," he whispered. "You did all that on the basis of a feeling?! You have any idea how many ways that could have gone wrong? They could've shown up with you still in there. Somebody else you can't beat like Kid Flash or Wonder Girl could've covered for them or-"

"Park, stop," said X putting a gloved hand on his pal's shoulder. "I know everything that could've gone wrong. I thought it all through. But there was an opportunity and I made the most of it. Now I'm Red X and I can do all kinds of things I couldn't before."

He explained all the suit's various functions and abilities. Park insisted on testing the dynamic response protection system, with X's permission loading up for a punch to the solar plexus that pushed X back slightly but didn't hurt him at all.

"Is that stuff thick," asked Park touching the surface of the suit.

"Nah, barely thicker than tights," said X.

"How's it-?"

"Moving the suit from the outside very quickly causes the suit to charge in that location making it stiff and absorbing your blow."

"Well . . . if this suit is so great, why doesn't Robin wear this all the time and get all the benefits of it?"

"What makes you think he and Barman don't? Just cuz they don't come out and say, "Hey, I've got a stealth function, does that mean they don't have a stealth function in their suits? What's more Batman, to let you know or to keep it secret and kick your ass with it?"

Park nodded with a knowing smile. Of course. Batman.

"It's not as cool as Batman's suit but it sure beats the hell out of the little dweeb's outfit," said Park and he walked a circle around him. He started laughing. "Miyou, what is it with you and showing off the booty? Seriously? Ballet and then in your off hours this," he said pointing to the rear of the suit which followed all of X's contours.

X shrugged. "Hey, I've got a cape here," he said grabbing both sides of it.

"A cape that's too short," chuckled Park.

"Doesn't matter," said X. "Nobody's supposed to see me anyway. But the suit is what it is. I didn't change it to a ballet fit. But think of what I can do now, Park? All those targets that were just too heavily defended, behind just too many layers of security. They're all on the table now. All of 'em. I can hit any of 'em."

"But you want to hit your particular targets most of all, right? The people it's supposed to be impossible to hurt."

X nodded. "I'm going to go after the ones in Jump City first but if you want to prep some dossiers about the worst banker scum of Singapore and Hong Kong for when I get back there, I'd appreciate it. And if I can help you out I'll do what I can."

Park followed X back to his building but remained outside. X changed out of the Red X suit and emerged in a similarly slobby jeans and t-shirt outfit. He and park went to a crappy bar nearby and sat in the darkened back of the place catching up on things. X told Park about his complete crush on his co-worker Natasha Suvarov and how he was getting somewhere now. Park told X that he now had a steady girlfriend, a beautiful Taiwanese girl, after going out with six different girls in the previous year he'd met one that was really smart and that he really liked. X congratulated him.

They parted a couple hours later like any other pair of close pals and co-workers who now worked in different cities would.

X had has first encounter with the Teen Titans shortly after that.

He didn't seek out a fight with them. It came about as a result of his efforts to obtain xenothium plasma. Using the suit's insane computer capabilities, X was scouring the web for any indications of stolen xenothium plasma out there. And suddenly, he got a few pings. From the few bits of communications that he intercepted before some Professor Chang lackeys started observing better operations security, he realized they were going after the xenothium supply of Jump City University.

X traced the phones of the lackeys who'd given away part of the story. They were disposables so there wasn't any way to trace them to a particular person but it was still enough of a clue. One evening there was a flurry of calls between those two and some other disposable phones. X put on the Red X suit and made his way to Jump City University. He was pretty sure that JCU's xenothium was stored at a particular building. He took up a position on a roof overlooking it. A few hours later, X started seeing the silhouettes of men filtering through campus to that certain building, always staying in the shadows, there were 15 or 20 of these lackeys all clad in black pants and a black hoodie.

X just snuck in behind them, always staying a hallway length behind them, and followed them to the xenothium. Somehow they knew where it was and X watched them unload the stuff into a series of stainless steel and pyrex canisters that looked like nothing more than oversized versions of the vials he had in his own belt, ten of them each the size of a 1 liter bottle.

X backed out ahead of them and followed them to their getaway vehicles. One of them was a big pickup truck. When six lackeys, all big dummies, six foot four and more and 250 pounds and more jumped in the back, 164 pound Red X jumped on, too and none of them noticed.

At their lair 20 minutes drive away in the warehouse district, Red X nimbly jumped out without making a sound and proceeded to start beating the crap out of all of them in the parking lot beside the dumpster and loading dock. He got six of them before the others realized something was up. He was almost as strong as any of them in the suit, much faster, much quicker, a better fighter and now accoutered with the other capabilities of the suit.

A minute and a half later the lackeys lay all around the parking lot, mostly unconscious though a few were still half conscious and groaning incoherently. X smiled in satisfaction beneath the skull mask.

"Computer. Use the scrambled line and dial 9-1-1, then switch me to computer voice." There was the expected whirring and buzzing noises.

"9-1-1 Jump City Police recorded line. How may I help you?"

In a computer voice, Red X alerted the police that there had been a robbery of JCU and that the proceeds seemed to be at 32 Industrial Drive next to the loading dock along with a bunch of knocked out flunkies of Professor Chang. X ended the call and had the computer switch his voice to normal. He grabbed two of the canisters and was just about to exit the scene when he heard that annoying little voice. "Titans, go!"

X thought of just trying to run, maybe with only one of the canisters. But there was a part of him that wanted to see how he could do against them. The answer was really well.

He quickly put down Beast Boy, Raven, Starfire and Cyborg with shurikens, his wrist blade and deft use of the stealth function in a running fight that went from the loading dock area to the lot entrance and onto the roof of an adjacent warehouse at a lower elevation. At every point in the fight Robin was just beyond whichever other Titan he was fighting. It was almost like he was just watching to see how good X was with the suit.

He'd just dispatched Cyborg and was turning around to locate Robin on the warehouse rooftop when he absorbed a flying kick in the back from the boy wonder.

"Unnh!"

"Give me back my suit, you thief!"

Luckily the dynamic response feature of the suit absorbed much of the force of the blow or his kidneys would have been in serious trouble. As it was the power of it sent him tumbling across the peastone that covered the roof. X was scrambling to his feet when a smoke birdarang went off right in front of him immediately shrouding the area in dense white smoke.

Rather than speak the command, X used the suit's finger controls. Ring-Ring-Middle-Middle-Ring. The heat vision feature activated. At the very edge of his peripheral vision, X saw a flash of neon green coming at him. He leaped forward and Robin's flying kick went harmlessly behind him.

Now, X reacted quicker and was on the boy wonder who had slammed into an air conditioning unit on the roof when he landed. X threw a right hook before the Titan leader had recovered his balance enough to dodge and wobbled the smaller boy.

He grabbed Robin by the wrists, appreciating up close, how much larger he was at six foot one and 164 pounds than the boy wonder. The kid couldn't have been more than five five and a 110 pounds tops. He pushed him back a couple steps with the smaller Titan offering almost no resistance. It was too easy. X knew something was up and with the instinct of a superlative ballet dancer, kept his body under control, his momentum in check and his feet always within the width of the stance of the backpedaling boy wonder. Sure enough, after a couple more steps, Robin tried to use his weight against him with a judo throw.

X not only didn't get thrown, but used the opportunity of Robin's not having his arms in position to defend, to pummel the smaller boy with a series of punches that left him woozy. A desperate punch to the crotch barely taxed the suit's response system and X responded with three blows much much harder. With Robin groaning and defenseless, X gathered the Titan leader's wrists and ankles together and shot out a glue X from one glove hogtying him.

X turned off the heat vision feature and took a few seconds to check and make sure of where the xenothium canisters were. That done, he turned back to the groaning boy wonder. He grabbed him by the collar and jumped over the edge of the roof to a lower level and from there onto an awning and then down to ground level.

The captured boy wonder was seething. "I suppose you think this means something and you're going to give me a bunch of villain trash talk now."

X rolled his eyes. "I couldn't care less about you and your junior Justice League. The only thing I have to tell you is that you're a fraud you little lawn gnome of the law." Red X hadn't planned on meeting the Titans and certainly not saying anything to them but now that he'd started the words rolled right off his tongue as he leaned in toward his vanquished foe. "The bank HSBC gets caught laundering hundreds of millions of dollars for drug cartels and facilitating transactions for terrorist groups and not one executive of that bank gets so much as a court summons. Attorney General Holder explicitly says that we can't hold anyone at HSBC responsible for their crimes. And where are you? Where are you and the rest of the Junior Justice League? Hell, where's the real Justice League? Nowhere! You don't do anything! Somebody could be the worst criminal on the planet and all they have to do is have some corrupt pig like Holder declare them off limits and you regard them as off limits. You're a fraud. You're not about justice. You just follow the official line no matter what it is, no matter how wrong it is!"

The boy wonder looked at him genuinely perplexed. Of all the rants he'd heard from villains before he'd never heard that. He started to open his mouth to say something back and just as he did, Red X balled up his yellow cape and stuffed it in his mouth as a gag.

"Mmmmf! Mmmmf! Mmmmf!"

X ignored him and carried the little bat by his collar over to where the xenothium canisters were. As luck would have it, there was a pink girl's bicycle there with tassles and a bedazzled basket in front. X sat Robin down in the basket grabbed the xenothium canisters, switched to stealth mode and started jogging away as sirens in the distance approached louder and louder.

**TT**-Author's Note - HSBC really did get caught knowingly laundering many millions of dollars of drug money for drug cartels and processing transactions for suspected terrorist fronts. Please, look it up. And then Attorney General Eric Holder really did say that we couldn't prosecute anyone at HSBC for their crimes because HSBC is too financially important. Again, please look it up. As though the bank couldn't go on if drone executive A went to jail and got replaced by drone executive B. But Holder established that bankers at the too big too fail banks are a caste above us regular citizens. The U.S. is just another banana republic.


End file.
